


Ashes on the Water

by JohnProdden999



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Angst, Crossover, Gen, o woops I dropped my monster condom that I use for my magnum chainsword
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2019-10-23 23:38:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 34,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17693345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JohnProdden999/pseuds/JohnProdden999
Summary: With the fabled Dragonborn disappearing to parts unknown following her victory over Alduin, a quiet disturbance in the northern ice fields goes undiscovered amidst the many turmoils still ravaging Skyrim. The otherworldly, lost soul that is left behind in the Sea of Ghosts is ill-needed by a province already on the precipice of destroying itself; but the actions of an unassuming slave miner may be all it takes to tie their fates together.





	1. Ashes in the Sea

It began with a thin tendril of water trickling in. The splash it made as it grazed against the dead metal of his warped coffin sounded too sharp, too frigidly clear to possibly be real.

A murky groan reverberated along the boxy frame.

His own breath echoed shallowly within the icy confines of his helm, the distant thump of twin hearts just as surely fading into the muffled noise beyond the plating which enclosed him.

It was not much longer before the tender rush of water tapered off into a retreat, leaving him once more to his quiet purgatory.

…

The next time the alien liquid entered, it came with a bold hiss that was strong enough to send chills running down the dead fibre under his armored skin.

A growl rumbled throughout the drop pod's structure, the unexpected rush of feeble aggression nonetheless rousing him from lifeless, sightless reverie.

A reluctant spark flared somewhere in the dormant recesses of his battle armor. Embers of vigor dangled within reach of his motionless arms in the formless murk.

Instinct willed him to take hold of it, and yet he hesitated. He drew in a wispy breath through the metal grills of his mouth, the crispness of the water streaming in nearly drowning out what little strength he had left.

The sound had become a soothing cascade by now, water folding into itself as opposed to crashing into parched metal. Ripples brushed against the battered armor skin of his boots.

It was almost enough to mask the screeching death throes of the drop pod. A faint flame ignited in the angry red eyes which adorned the otherwise stoic visage of his helm.

He watched through numb and frost-speckled lenses as the riveted hull across from him tore apart under the influx of ice water. The clear liquid poured into the vacant chamber, pooling beneath him.

Serene waves flowed along the surface, muddying his scarred reflection with gentle sways of dim light. The wrought metal cross hanging upon his chestplate wavered, and the lines between white cloth and black armor blurred together in a cloudy mist.

Even so, it was the dull sheen of his sword which shone brighter in the rapidly flooding troop bay.

It hung in an eerily vacant row of seats across from him, the stony silver surface of its blade staring back at him. The chains which once bound its hilt to his hands were broken, dangling from the handle as they danced with the rising water.

He ground his armored fingers into the restraints clamping him to his watery grave, tiredly willing the cords of synthetic muscle in his armor back to war with the familiar cacophony of grinding metal.

Another chunk of the drop pod broke away, bending inwards with a rush of water flowing in through the jagged rift left behind.

Numbing coldness wrapped around him in a soft embrace as he yanked himself free of his restraints, the water never breaking in its gentle motions as he waded over to his weapon.

A cascade of ripples washed over his helmet, wiping away the crystals of ice that had condensed over its eyes. His boots stumbled in the murk, bringing him to the precipice of slipping away.

He knelt there for a moment, the furious roars of the drop pod steadily mellowing out as water enveloped the entire chamber.

Soon, he was left with only the void of his own mind, and the shallow thumping of two hearts that pulled in two different directions.

…

Some small semblance of clear thought slipped into his mind, above the cloudy musings of still awakening senses.

It sent a sharp cold running through what flesh still remained inside him, a shivering realization that chilled him more than this alien water ever could.

_I am alone._

He released a breath, loud enough to grate over the distortions of his helmet's vox, clear and reverberating to him in the void of his helmet underneath the stifling water. Armored legs sluggishly pushed him back upwards.

His hands found the hilt of his weapon, fingers lethargically taking their dutiful place on the worn handle.

Still, he did not fight as a sudden force entered the hold with him, nudging him towards a craggy opening where some faint light was rippling in. Only when it dragged him to the precipice between the collapsing confines of his tomb and the open abyss beyond did he dig the barred soles of his boots into the ground, anchoring himself to what would be certain death in just a few moments.

_I am alive._

And he should not have been.

He gazed down into the unending darkness which yet lay beneath his feet, as though doing so would show him a spark of guidance he so desperately sought in that moment.

It never came.

With a half-hearted push of his legs, he launched himself away from the crumpling confines of the drop pod. He drifted away from the final, muted screech that the immobile hulk of alloy bellowed out, buckling in on itself in a violent cascade of sundered metal.

The chain which had been snaking so dangerously loosely around his sword's handle slipped away to the open expanse beneath him, carried away by the soft currents of the sea.

His twin hearts throbbed with a foreign sensation, a trepidation that a century at war had never prepared him for.

It was all he could do for the moment to stifle the rush of thoughts, the embrace of the sea, and propel himself upwards towards an otherworldly light refracting through mottled lenses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-posted from ffnet under the name DasCheesenborgir


	2. Chapter 1

The mere steam from the wooden bowl of stew placed in front of him was welcome anodyne for the chilling stiffness that had settled in Cedric's jaw.

All the better, for the earthly aromas that seeped into his nostrils shortly after awakened a rumbling in his empty belly which almost had him gnashing his teeth in anticipation.

He did not do so, however.

The warping haze which wafted up from its bubbling surface gave him pause. An eerie sensation crept up his spine, a certain instinct that he'd seen this before flaring to life like the scalding flames of the ore smelter.

There was a crack, a creak of wood from behind him. A cold draft wrapped around the lumps of fur that enveloped his sinewy figure, brushing against the pallid skin of his exposed hands. His fingers went taut against the splotchy grey surface of the table.

He heard the jostle of heavy boots against stone and metal plates shuffling against leather, and his back instinctively went rigid- the stings of week-old lashes on his back felt painfully fresh all of a sudden.

He felt his neck going limp, his head slowly drooping downwards as though the messy locks of raven hair dangling in front of his face were anchoring him to the table. His heart beat in tandem with the thundering footsteps behind him.

His nails brushed against something curved and rigid on the table- a handle, of some sorts. Slowly, as the thumping of boots beat ever louder on his ears like tribal war drums, he wrapped his lanky fingers around it.

The footsteps reached a crescendo as he took firm hold of the object- a single blue eye peeked out from underneath the curtain of hair shrouding his visage to confirm what weapon he had so fortunately come upon. It was a wooden spoon.

"Hail, Thoring. How have you been?"

A withering breath slipped out from Cedric's parched lips as the heavy footfalls of the inn's new guest went right past him. Still, he kept his head low.

The voice he heard spoke with the thick, sludgy accent he was all too used to hearing from Nord men. His fingers wrapped tighter around the spoon.

"As well as anyone can be these days. The nightmares have stopped, at least."

Cedric wished he could say the same.

He peeked up some, heartbeat still thudding in his ears. The armor lining the new figure's back looked different from that which he was used to seeing- small metal plates wrapped around a coat of what seemed like leather as opposed to one large mass of imposing steel. The helmet, cradled in their hands and facing back towards Cedric, stared at him with empty, rectangular eyeslits laid over a blank visage. The spotted grey metal was altogether free of the sort of pointless embroidery he'd grown used to seeing, save for a peculiar circle dimly stamped into the helmet's forehead.

It was very… unlike Nord craftsmanship. At least from what he'd seen.

He relaxed some more as the two voices slurred into casual banter, the rush of hot blood in his veins tapering off to a lukewarm simmer.

"Hey. Wake up. Your stew's going to get cold soon."

His head raised back up to meet the disapproving glare of the inn's maid, the stained cowl she wore casting a dark shadow over her face. "And we don't take kindly to patrons sleeping in the common area. If you need a place to stay, rent a room."

"Right. Sorry," breathed Cedric, at least halfway sympathetically. He gazed past the polished armor of the newcomer, took note of the patchy, threadbare garments that the innkeeper- 'Thoring', if he'd heard correctly- wore.

The maid walked away with nary another word, thick boots thumping loudly against the creaky wooden floor, dragging the scratchy ends of a broom behind her.

"The Hall of the Vigilants was destroyed, you know."

Cedric's ears perked up at the mention of that, the word 'Vigilant' bringing a spark of remembrance to mind. He remembered it being passed around over the dirty nighttime fires, rumors of an eerie hooded figure tirelessly stalking the Markarth streets, by day and night.

One of the smaller voices at the fire had recalled only a brief encounter with the man, but the voice was so broken and babbling by then that nobody but Cedric paid it any heed. He remembered the boy, his physical form blurry and smudged in the grimy recesses of his memory, but with the image of the child's malformed corpse resting against the stained pillars the morning after that night fresh in his mind.

Nobody really knew what that Vigilant had done, ultimately- but something in Cedric's gut told him he wouldn't mourn the passing of more of that hooded man's ilk.

"What? How? Who?"

"Vampires." One word, spoken with such a disdainful growl, was apparently all that was needed to answer all those questions.

"By the Gods, it never ends…"

"If you know of any able-bodied men or women-"

"What? So you can march them away into some damned war against vampires? Any 'able-bodied man or woman' with more blood than mead in their hearts in Dawnstar have already gone, Rik! To fight the _Empire_!"

A tense silence fell over the inn after Thoring's outburst, the dwindling crackle of the hearth the only sound left as the only other pair of eyes in the room drifted over to the counter. The maid's expression held an even deeper grimace than before, but she said nothing.

"I think it would be best if you left," Thoring said, a hint of somberness battering away the spark of fiery demeanor that had slipped into his voice.

Another pregnant silence filled the air, lingering for seconds as the crackle of burning wood grew ever quieter. The sound of shuffling metal broke it, the armored newcomer sliding his helm back over the short-cropped blonde hair upon his head.

"Stay safe, friend," he murmured out as clearly as he could through the sheets of iron encasing his head. Thoring offered no blessing of his own in return, instead opting to sluggishly run the dirty washcloth gripped in his hands around in aimless circles on the countertop.

It wasn't until the armored man left the building that Cedric relaxed, sitting upright again. A pathetic crack rang out as a charred black mass of ash tumbled down onto stone.

"I'll get some more firewood," said the maid as she too scrambled out the door in accord, the worn wooden handle of her broom clattering against the floor.

Cedric kept his gaze fixed on the innkeeper, watching the man continue to tend to his counter with such a… crestfallen gait. A stony mask fixed over his visage, never breaking, always frowning, but with the mild quiver breaking into his motions betraying the emotions he was evidently trying hard to suppress.

It was a look Cedric was admittedly quite familiar with. He breathed a shaky breath of his own, quietly reevaluating a few things he'd taught himself over a grueling twenty years.

Eventually, Cedric's baser instincts overtook his bout of curiosity.

He turned his attention back down to the bowl of stew in front of him, hungrily eyeing the glazed chunks of meat floating around in the richly colored broth. He held fast though, inhaling the aromas again, savoring the smell of real food, that he had bought with gold out of the grimy leather pouch nestled warmly inside his furs. Savoring his newfound freedom.

The people here were different. Maybe they would actually take him in- maybe he could start over after all.

 _Food first_ , he mused as he dug his spoon into the bowl.

Tomorrow, he'd pay a visit to the town's mine, see if he could put his lifelong talents to honest labor for once. Cidhna Mine already seemed like such a distant memory as he sunk his chattering teeth into their first bite of succulent stewed meat.


	3. Chapter 2

The early morning air sunk its claws into Cedric, the warmth of the inn's hearth and food slammed out of him as though he had been struck by a hammer. Gusts of white blew out of his lips as he exhaled a shaky breath, his body momentarily failing him as he shivered and fell against the inn's door frame for support. The frosted wood that his fingers clung onto was no more forgiving than the powdery snow on the ground, whose coldness seemed to pierce right through his boots.

He gasped as he inhaled, almost choking on the influx of icy air. The lumps of food inside his stomach felt like they had frozen over into glaciers. His whole body locked up in quivering contortions, the thick furs which he had traveled in for days seeming to do nothing for him now.

His eyes glazed over as they caught the glistening rays of rising sunlight, ore veins of pink refracting over the crystal clear sky.

The sea shifted about lazily, silvery soft waves brimming over it rippling through the murky reflection of the sky above. His breathing steadied as he watched its gentle motions, his sinewy, quivering muscles slowly stabilizing as the northern air seeped into his blood.

"You don't intend to go out to there, do you, traveller?"

Cedric craned his neck around, the startlingly sudden voice from right behind him not even enough the break the graceful calm which the air gripped him with.

He exhaled a wispy breath towards Thoring, waking mind still trying to process the question which had been posed to him.

"The Sea of Ghosts," Thoring insisted steadily, craggy face betraying no discomfort at the coldness despite there being only a tunic between him and the frigid seabreeze.

"No." A shrill wind howled by Cedric's ears, the black locks of his hair shuddering in the breeze as it flooded past him and into the inn.

Thoring, stony expression braving the cold without fail, merely nodded, and turned to march back inside, presumably to his countertop. A lonely post to hold down, in such an empty place.

Perhaps it was the solemn quietness he moved with that sparked some empathy in Cedric- or perhaps it was just natural curiosity- but against his instincts, Cedric called out towards Thoring's retreating back. "Why do you ask?"

The muffled thump of footsteps ground to a halt, leaving only the eerie wail of the wind ringing in his ears.

"Something feels wrong about it is all. Can't say what, exactly. I s'pose that just makes me even more uneasy about it."

"Just a hunch?"

A tired pair of eyes turned back to meet Cedric's gaze, coal-dark rings encircling the pits which they rested in. "Aye. That it is."

They stood like that for a moment more, Cedric half-wondering if he was freezing solid in the tunnel of wind between the inn and the pitiless cold outside.

"If there's nothing else, friend, I'd rather you close that door. Would be a shame if you came back to an ice cave for rest."

"Right," Cedric breathed, sliding off the door and letting the wind carry it back into its rightful place.

His eyes lingered on the sturdy, worn wood as it slammed shut.

His numbed hands ran over the cold surface of his fur garments, grasping for the pouch of coins stashed inside. The absent weight of ten gold pieces was palpable.

If all went well, he wouldn't need to come back here for rest at all.

* * *

 

Ultimately, even the morning chill proved incapable of stifling the hammering heartbeat inside his chest as he approached the Dawnstar mines. What had appeared to him as thin wisps of smoke in the distance just minutes ago now towered over him as great, cloudy pillars of ash, the acrid stench of burning metal thawing the numbness in his body.

His boots trudged shakily through the snow, the crunch of crisp white giving way to the wet squelches of grey sludge.

He ground his teeth together to brace himself against the sight of the smelter, its splotchy hull bending and swaying with distorted waves of heat floating around it. A lone man stood by, dressed in naught but a black-stained tunic and threadbare pants, shoveling coals into the furnace.

Cedric slowed his advance, trying to work some semblance of calmness into his quivering body.

_I'm ready. I'm ready._

His boots sloshed to a halt footsteps away from the man by the smelter, the raggedy old figure continuing about his work with a slumped resignation Cedric was all too used to seeing. It gave him pause, for certain. He watched silently for moments more, hoping the man would notice him standing by so he wouldn't have to interrupt.

When Cedric at last caught the man's withering gaze, his eyes almost as dead cold as the snow, he found no luck in being acknowledged as the man's sunken frown merely deepened before resuming his dredging work.

A spark of anger flickered within Cedric, like the faint embers floating out from the smelter.

"Hey," he said, perhaps more forcefully than he should have in the moment, but it did at least catch the smelter worker's attention. The man's motions slowed, and he craned his unsightly gaunt face around towards Cedric.

"What do you want?"

His breath stank of smoke and mead. His voice, gravelly and drawling, sounded as though both had taken their toll on his throat in equal measure.

Gold. Safety. Freedom- simple things Cedric imagined any man in Skyrim wanted.

Looking at the pathetic state of this man, the crushingly oppressive smoke billowing over them, he was left wondering whether he'd come looking in the right place after all.

"I heard Dawnstar needed miners."

Wintry grey eyes scrutinized him from behind a smear of ash, a thin frown curling up into a shriveled grimace.

"So it does. What's it to you?"

Cedric's eyes flittered around, appraising his horrible drab surroundings with dread settling in the pit of his stomach like a heavy lump of coal.

"I can help." The words tumbled out of his mouth with none of the fiery determination he had worked up the night before, and he soon found himself almost wishing he could take them back.

"You? Help?" A mirthless chuckle rumbled out from the smelter worker's ugly mouth, their lips twisting into a wretched grin showing off his gnarly teeth. "You look like you've crawled out of a slave pen."

His felt his hands tightening into fists. His knuckles thawed from the cold with a stinging pain which only reminded him of the scars and scratches which criss crossed over them.

"Struck a nerve, did I boy?"

"I've mined for all my life," snapped back Cedric, his voice hovering just above a snarl.

The smelter man's hideous visage hardened, his eyes narrowing, his lips settling back into their tightly pressed grimace.

"I know my way around silver," insisted Cedric, softer, as he reined in the fiery indignation lapping at his heart. "I know the mine owners are looking for people like that."

"Quicksilver, boy. There's a difference."

"I-"

"Talk to Beitild."

His words trailed off into the wind as the smelter man, his piece apparently said, returned to work.

The scrape of rusty metal against coals filled his ears as he stood listlessly in the wet snow, flakes of what could have been ash or snow beginning to collect on Cedric's slumping shoulders.

He considered lashing out again. Angrier this time, demand respect from the pathetic old wretch before him.

_Leave. There's nothing for you here._

His fingers uncurled, dangling from his porcelain hands.

"She's usually loitering around the old Iron-Breaker mine this time of day. Gods only know why she's so fond of the old shithole."

The old man's eyes met Cedric one last time, the shuffling cacophony of coals coming to an eerie halt. "I guess some people just can't run from the past, eh?"

* * *

 

The streets were as quiet as when Cedric last trudged through them, the soft glow of the sun reflecting harshly off the crystalline white sheets of snow.

He drifted along, lazily, aimlessly, like the waves in the rumbling sea beyond.

His eyes were inevitably drawn to it again, the unending expanse of shifting lights mesmerizing to a pair of eyes which could not fathom such a sprawling space.

_'You don't intend to go out there, do you?'_

The words of the innkeeper… Thoring- turned about in his mind as he watched the distant silhouettes of birds soaring over the sea.

A queer wind brushed unruly locks of hair out of his face, but he did not mind it at all, even as it trailed by with a soft wail.

For a time, he simply stood there, once again letting the coldness of the air seep into his snowy white skin, steal away his breath.

_'I guess some people just can't run from the past, eh?'_

He squinted, eyes catching faint ripples breaking along the lazy surface of the ocean. Silvery scales glinted in the sunlight before dipping back into the murky unknown.

"To oblivion with this place," he murmured quietly to himself, vaguely aware of the worn-down, frost-speckled houses around him. The pillars of acrid smoke tainting the clear sky behind him.

He'd find a way, he reassured himself. To somewhere- a place far away from the mines and grime and ash of his past. To a place where he could be as free as the birds flying over the sea, and the fish swimming in it.


	4. Chapter 3

The voices that woke Cedric were muffled, murky. The same formless distortion greeted his eyes as he opened them with the sluggishness of an otherworldly creature rising from water.

The dim glow of warm, orange light blended with harsh bronze and cold rock.

" _Cedric!"_

He gasped, inhaling a mouthful of stifling air as that one word pierced the veil of slurring noise around him. His sight sharpened, the blurs at the edge of his vision receding somewhat.

" _Bastard Reachmen! Kill them all!"_

He saw the glint of blood on the flange of the mace. The specks of eviscerated flesh which clung to the metal.

Time seemed to grind to a halt as his gaze drew downwards, the pandemonium around him whizzing by at a hellish pace, screams and shouts screeching at his ears beyond a muffling veil. He blinked, trying to make sense of the defiled and limp body slumped across his vision.

Make sense of its warm, calloused skin through the scratches which lacerated it. Piece together the smudgy, comely face it once held from the jellied globs of red which poured from its neck and scattered over the stone.

_I am sad._

He made the observation with such a bizarre detachment, his heartbeat thumping limply in the back of his mind when it should have been roaring like tonnes of star-wrought metal being crushed under the merciless weight of the ocean.

His weightless body launched from its helpless perch on the ground as the guardsman's mace flailed harmlessly past his head, his arms effortlessly lashing out and punching clean through the armored figure's chest. There was no scream, no reverberating feedback from the savage impact rushing up his arms. It was like tearing through soiled parchment.

A queer chill nipping at the back of his mind tempered his aimless anger with a sliver of fear.

Something danced at the periphery of his senses, an…  _alien?_ thing threading itself through the cushioned murk of his memories, beckoning him towards it.

" _Cedric! Over here!"_

His eyes snapped up, his sudden motions sending ripples through the slowly trudging world around him. He opened his mouth to cry out, call out, to the faint voice which carried his name with such urgency. No words came as he bellowed silently into the void.

The ragged flesh of the guard he'd killed slipped through his fingers like dirty, sludgy water. It filtered into his fading surroundings, melding grotesquely with the broken corpse of his beloved Thera in the distance.

_Thera!_

The name died on his tongue as soon as it came to mind, the bloody ruby glint of her memory slurring away into the fiery deluge.

_Focus._

The voice boomed into his consciousness, sending quakes running through his already quivering form. It prodded at him with a callous arrogance, grasping him by his limply hanging neck and forcing his gaze away from the mesmerizing pain of his past. His hands, still slick with blood, tightened even further into fists, craggy nails digging into his palms.

His world blurred and blacked out, the faint, lingering impact of some formless mass ringing in his ears as he tumbled into the ground.

_Listen to me._

He listened, for a moment, if only because he could no longer  _see_.

He listened, and heard only the screams of people he had come to see as his friends. He heard the choking cries of one which he some day might have called his loved one. He heard the hateful screams of those who'd stood over him all his life, and the frenzied bellows of madmen and warlocks clashing with them over the din of clanging metal and shearing flesh-

A firm grasp yanked him away from his memories, roughly shoving him towards a dark alleyway hidden from the raging fires.

_It was not your fate to die with the rest of them._

He tumbled into the shadows with a forceful splash, darkness enveloping him. He flailed in the abyss, blackness swimming by his vision like loosely floating ashes.

The voice continued to ring in his ears, soothing azure hands tugging at his limbs in directions he could not comprehend. He thrashed about in its grip, the frenzied motions coursing through his body with a physical heaviness that felt all too real.

A single arm broke free from the confounding forces enveloping him, the serene voice reverberating ever more urgently throughout his trembling bones. He reached out towards the one thing which looked familiar to him in this tumultuous ocean, the moonlit glint of a broken chain floating in the tumbling abyss.

The broken chain of a free man.

Freedom! Had he,  _Cedric,_ not earned his freedom!?

The tightening grips desperately fighting to pry his feeble mind away from his petty mortal musings weighed upon him more heavily than any chains could.

_No._

He could feel the beginnings of a scream welling in the drowning pits of his lungs as the image of that chain slipped away. His body propelled helplessly through the blackness towards a horrible white cold he could not bear to face.

Baleful red eyes bled into his sight, hard ruby lenses burning through his blindness with an otherworldly glare even as they cast their gaze downwards with a quiet melancholy that seemed unbefitting of such terrifyingly incomprehensible... things.

An icy chill ran down his spine, a windy whisper from the Sea of Ghosts grazing by his ears.

" _Without the dark, there can be no light."_

It was the last thing he could discern before his very figure, ephemeral as it was, buckled and folded in on itself.

* * *

 

Cedric awoke with a scream, his hoarse voice, finally given form once more, bellowing out into the faint coldness of his room even as he bolted upright.

Sweat dribbled down his pallid skin, every trickle seeming to send shivers coursing through his sinewy, but  _intact_  body. The air nipped savagely at his drenched figure, but he shakily drank it in with a ravenous thirst regardless.

His blue eyes darted about every empty corner of the room,  _his_ room, however transient the ownership was, watching the knotted wooden boards with a wide open, unblinking gaze.

The candle at his bedside table had long since gone out, but the faint rays of firelight trickled in outside from underneath the door. The dusty wooden shelf across from him bore no signs of mind-twisting distortions, and the only thing which tugged at his skin were the cold, soaked bedfurs matted to the lower half of his body.

His ears heard only the urgent pounding of fists upon his door when he stopped screaming. The clambering tumble of an opening lock.

The noises of such intrusion bothered him not, and if anything, he greeted the influx of light into his room with a welcome wide-eyed gaze as Thoring lumbered in.

The innkeeper did not say anything, and did not move any closer towards Cedric from his perch on the door frame. The dark circles hanging under his eyes, the ever-present slump in his shoulders- somehow, Cedric felt that they too came from many sleepless nights.

"A dream," Cedric rasped out when his breath stilled enough for him to form words again. "The Sea of Ghosts."

And more, of course. So much,  _painfully_ more. But musings on the past alone, no matter how much they stung, were not enough to wake him, screaming, in the night.

No. He looked into the empty eyes of Thoring, the barren gaze of someone who could only watch those suffering from the same ailment they were with a solemn pity, and knew now that they had both seen the same thing.

"All the other townsfolk I'd spoken to were sure it was over," drawled Thoring. "That the nightmares were gone. Ever since that Priest of Mara left for the tower on the hill. Sure enough, they've all slept soundly since then."

"But not you," said Cedric, his voice still barely carrying enough strength to speak above a whisper.

Neither of them spoke for some time, and only the shivering, ragged breaths of Cedric filled the dank room. Some sliver of feeling began to worm its way back into his nostrils as his body began to steady itself, the rank odor of his own sweat palpable.

"I lost my daughter to the dragons," said Thoring quite suddenly.

Cedric's gaze softened, his waking mind, having momentarily shaken the queerness of his dreams, immediately realizing that though it was the nightmares which woke men like them in the pitch darkness, it was something far more sinister which slowly drove them into the shuffling depths of quiet despair.

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"I know. You seem like a man who's well acquainted with loss."

The remark would have had him scrambling to leave just a day ago, Cedric mused. Being a Markarth fugitive in a Nord town, he couldn't be too careful. Something told him that was the last thing Thoring was concerned about though- so he sat in his bed, and nodded solemnly.

"Ordinary travellers have never shared the same night terrors I have. I can only suppose this curse is for those who've already their fair share of burdens."

They sat and stood respectively like that for moments longer, with only the quiet crackle of the hearth outside as company for the reigning silence.

Cedric's eyes eventually dropped down to the drenched furs he laid in, the filthy wetness of them clinging to his skin with a foul chill. He made no effort to free himself of them, though it was certainly not in the mind of being decent in front of the innkeeper.

Freedom.

What a laughable concept he fooled himself with.

Two days ago, he'd resolved to leave Dawnstar in the early morning, strike out on his own and seek fortune elsewhere. The day after that, he'd resolved to do the same after another night's sleep and a warm meal.

Had he not been woken by this dream, he likely would've put off his departure again in the morning. Curl up in these rank furs and hide for scant moments more from the world.

He glanced up as Thoring retreated from his room, dragging his booted feet across the ground back to his familiar old countertop, no doubt.

He closed his eyes as the door shut again, peering into the darkness of his memories in search of some distant discussion with the one light that had been in his old life.

" _Without the dark, there can be no light."_

* * *

 

He wasn't sure if it was the queer dream-whispers he'd caught only a fleeting glimpse of, or if it really was the bittersweet images of Thera he had reluctantly dug out of his mind which had him brought him out to the shore.

The water churned up against the gravel, quiet roars roiling all along the coast from the abyssal expanse beyond. The waves shifted before his eyes like moonlit shadows.

After what he had been through moments ago, he would be lying to himself to say he was not afraid to be standing out there, his clothes doing nothing to shield his still sweaty body from the wailing winds swirling around him. To be standing underneath the two moons and the star-speckled sky, their uncaring gaze reflecting murkily off the deep sea.

He knelt down at the water's edge, legs quivering as he wondered if it would reach out and swallow him whole, just as it had in his dream.

His breathing echoed ever more loudly in his ears as he peered intently into the darkness, his chest tightening with an overwhelming sense of wrongness the longer he did so.

He reached out with a naked hand, pallid white skin stretched thinly over bony appendages standing out staunchly against the backdrop of the black water. His fingers, numb as they were, bristled in the chilling breeze.

" _I'm not afraid of anything, Thera."_

That could not have been farther from the truth back then. He'd been afraid of losing her. So fearful had he been to see her die that he could not bear to stay by her side when the fighting had broken out in the streets.

He was weak, too.  _She'd_  been his strength in the mines, pushing him to use his twiny arms, heft the pickaxe, fight through the rock and pain so they could have time together. At her side, he would have been nothing more than a liability.

And now…

Now, his fingertips hovered above the water.

A shaky gasp escaped his lips as he plunged his hand in. The freezing current rushed up his arm, tearing through flesh down to his bones with a horrible white cold.

His fingers danced about without feeling in the water, the shock of the cold blotting out all other sense.

It was  _insanity,_ foolishness.

He ground his teeth together, squeezed his eyes shut, beckoned the dark to come to him again, as it had in the dream. He reached in deeper. A wintry grasp seized him by the sleeves of his coat, waves tugging at his arm.

He didn't even know what had happened to her. And somehow, that hurt even more than the thought of seeing her die.

His eyes snapped open, that familiar chill, the overwhelming  _fear_ rushing up his spine when he felt his fingers brush against something solid in the water. Something small, rounded, the invisible edges of it intertwining with more of the same.

He was afraid now, but he wrapped his fingers around the object all the same. He was weak now, but he heaved through the cold, pulled his twiny arm out of the water and brought his shivering hand up to his eyes.

His ice-slicked fingers clasped a broken chain, its silvery, frosted metal shining faintly in the moonlight.

It only left him with more questions, more fear. That his dreams could blur into reality like this shook him to his core. Wondering  _why_ this would happen left him with tears welling in his eyes, and a stifled sob clawing in his lungs.

It was all he could do to clench his cursed prize tightly to his chest, the cold heaviness of the metal seeping through to his heart as the ocean breeze brushed against his ears.

" _We have purpose."_


	5. Chapter 4

_What now?_

The question looped around in Cedric's mind endlessly as he sat on the bench, wordlessly rooting himself to the wood with the chain he'd found hidden inside his coat. Even now, pulled out of the sea and drying inside the warmth of the inn, the heavy metal pressed against his chest with a skin-piercing coldness.

He shuddered upon just acknowledging the sensation again. The chill which radiated from the thing was unnatural, setting his nerves into a quivering overdrive rather than numbing them like the frigid air.

Even so, he did not question whether or not he had done the right thing in seeking out the source of his fears. The desire to know more, to unveil the truth, spread throughout his mind like a virulent plague… setting its warped tendrils upon the stars themselves-

His breath hitched as he felt that trickle of intrusive thoughts enter his mind.

He closed his eyes and listened intently. Only the dying crackle of firewood greeted his ears.

He found nothing in the darkness, the void inside his mind.

_Without the dark, there can be no light._

His single heart thundered against the chain clasped to his chest.

"Please," he whispered to  _whatever_ it was which hounded him so. His plea trailed off before he could even give sound to it, sudden realization that he did not know what to even ask for settling in.

Still, nothing answered, and he was left opening his eyes to an inn that was as mundane and empty as when he had last seen it.

His eyes flicked over to the unmanned countertop, and then the shut door of one of the far rooms.

He wondered if perhaps Thoring could rest easy now. If this curse which had plagued the innkeeper had finally been passed on in its entirety, to  _him_ now.

He felt for the pouch of coins lost within the folds of his coat, its weight seeming so small and insignificant now. Shaky, bony fingers fished it out from the still wet furs of one of his arms, and unbound the frayed string which tied it closed.

A paltry collection of coins clattered onto the table, the clinking cascade of those few gold pieces doing little to mask the sound of the inn's door opening. The cold breeze that followed did nothing to turn Cedric's musings away from himself.

His wide blue eyes zipped from coin to coin, working in a jumbled mess to try and count out what little wealth he had left, for a purpose he wasn't precisely even sure of yet. The meaningless faces printed upon them gazed emptily back at him, offering no more answers than anything else had.

"Hey."

He snapped up straight at the sound of the intruding voice, its silky dark tones caressing his ears with a gentle firmness. It faltered somewhat, perhaps because of his sudden movement.

"I… think you dropped this?"

He craned his neck around, unable to see the new figure too clearly but catching an intoxicatingly musky scent… almost like that of freshly fallen rain upon stone… emanating from her. It was a subtle undercurrent, capitalized by a hint of richly aged leather standing out from the grimy smells of the inn.

And himself, Cedric noted with a pang of insecurity.

Nevertheless, he swung his legs over the bench, pivoting himself around entirely to face the hooded woman's outstretched hand, her porcelain fingers pinching a gold coin.

"Oh," was all he could manage in response.

Perhaps it was just the contrast of the pitch-black cloth which enveloped her, but she seemed somehow paler than he was, white as snow, even with the dim glow of firelight touching upon her. His dim blue eyes uncontrollably trailed towards her own, her jrises practically glowing with an unnatural green.

A light shiver ran down his spine as he hastily turned his sight back to the coin, the shakes breaking through to his hands despite his attempts to suppress them as he reached out to take the offered gold piece.

He grimaced as his bony, calloused fingers came in brief contact with the woman's, her smooth skin radiating with the chill of the sea.

"Thank you," he murmured, turning his gaze downwards in spite of the dozens of questions springing to life in his mind, the wild thoughts trying to fit this mysterious woman in with the bizarre happenings he'd been experiencing. It was a pitiful, mewling voice inside him which told him that such a beautiful creature would never become entangled in his ugly fate.

He waited for the sound of footsteps trailing away, but they never came. His eyes remained rooted to the floor, and the woman's heavy boots, obscured by a curtain of black cast by her robes, never left his sight.

Curiosity overtook him as he slowly turned his gaze back upwards, finding, rather surprisingly, that the woman's head tilted quizzically in much of the same way his own was. A startled "Sorry," unexpectedly slipped out from her lips, a bizarre bashfulness momentarily overtaking the serene features of her face. "I'm just… you're not the innkeeper are you?"

"No," he managed to sputter out even as her eyes widened and mouth moved to correct herself on some unintended slight which might've slipped into her last question. He struggled hard to keep his eyes on hers, the wild intensity of them almost blinding to him. "I'm just passing through."

She didn't say anything immediately. Cedric bristled, feeling the urge to break his gaze away from her judging green eyes. Only because he didn't did he notice a peculiarly large… cask, of sorts, hanging from her back, the barren wood of its top poking out from over her shoulder.

"Why? Do you need a room?"

"Hm? Oh. No, I'm just… passing through, as well," she said with a warm smile. It may have been meant to reassure Cedric, but all it did was amplify the cold burn of the chain clutched to his chest. "I was just stopping by for directions. Might've taken a wrong turn along the way."

"Oh? Where are you headed?" He hadn't meant to pry any further into her business, certainly having enough of his own to worry about, but it felt… natural, to ask. He wasn't sure. It was certainly more comforting to turn the line of questioning to her than keep it on himself.

His keen blue eyes, honed for noting small details in hardened rock, quickly saw the slight droop in her eyes. The tightening of her mouth. He damned himself for asking.

Before he could scramble to offer his apologies however, she did still answer, albeit in broad strokes. "Out of province… for a while."

"Oh. I see."

The glimmer of somberness on her face was gone as quickly as he'd noticed it, her glossy lips twitching back up into a ghost of a smile. "Where are you headed?"

"The Sea of Ghosts." His answer came tumbling off his tongue before he'd even thought it through, the suddenness of it jarring himself more than it did her. Truthfully, he'd just still been musing over his next course of action, and had been dangerously close to settling on staying at the inn for another night, trickling away the coins in his purse until he had no choice but to set out for  _somewhere._

 _No,_ he reaffirmed to himself. He was going out there, and he would find the bottom of his curse which had so peculiarly found its way to him.

"Oh? That's… interesting. Whereabouts in the sea exactly?"

His brows furrowed. A warm flush of embarrassment seemed to strangely be crawling up his neck as he admitted, "I don't know."

He saw her smile widen. "Are you a sailor or something?"

"No," he answered, the flush starting to work its way up to his frost-blasted cheeks.  _I'm a slave miner stricken by a curse I can't even begin to comprehend._

"It's been a strange past few days," he did admit out loud. "I came here looking for work, but there's none to be found."

"I don't imagine you'd have any better luck looking out in the sea," she responded dryly, eyes glinting with a hint of mischief. He couldn't help but mirror her smile, despite the gloom of his situation.

"I certainly don't have any illusions about that. There's just something I need to see out there."

The woman just nodded, now turning her gaze around the room. Cedric's hopes rose suddenly, wondering if, somehow, against the expectations of that damningly small voice ringing inside his head, this woman really did have a part to play in whatever he'd gotten himself into. He waited silently, perhaps to hear confirmation,  _anything,_ a sign,that she might've understood his plight.

It never came.

"Well, I really should be going, actually. It was nice chatting," she said with a last, fleeting smile before turning for the door.

Every part of Cedric berated himself for even thinking that anything else could've happened, and he nearly crushed himself back into his seat, hunched over and brooding, had a small, brazen fire not ignited within him. Had one, simple, unassuming thought not crossed his mind.

"Isn't it a little dangerous to be travelling at night? And without directions at that?"

He excused the fact that she needed directions after finding herself in a hold capital, noting that her very presence radiated a sense of foreignity. An exotic, striking darkness amongst the numbing canvas of white. His brows furrowed as he considered just what she sought in a quiet port town like this. He abandoned the line of questioning when his mind inevitably turned it upon himself.

The words had halted her in her footsteps, and though she did not turn to face Cedric, he could feel an uncomfortable tension beginning to flood the room.

Her shoulders drooped, and the cask drawn over her back sagged. He wondered just how heavily the thing must have weighed on her.

"I don't have a lot of time to lose. I'm sorry, I can't say anything more."

"You'll lose a lot more time if you're wandering aimlessly out in the dark, won't you?"

She pivoted around, fixing him with a gaze that had seemingly lost its warm façade. The ever-present chill resting upon his chest flared up to a strength he hadn't felt since he'd been at the shore just hours ago as he could've sworn he saw her perfect green eyes flicker into a baleful red, even if for just a moment.

He blinked, and saw with some hesitant relief that they were indeed still the striking emerald irises he'd been so smitten by.

She did not break the silence which hung between them, and Cedric did not feel content to let it linger.

"You're headed out to sea too, aren't you?"

It was not merely wishful thinking of his that hoped they had the same destination in mind. If the woman strayed this close to the province shoreline with the intent of leaving, there wasn't much else she could've been planning to travel by.

Even so, he felt a twang of regret at his insistence on asking after her now. Particularly when he'd been content to let it slide before.

The leaden heaviness upon his chest intensified. He would be lying if he denied that he'd already come to enjoy the mysterious woman's enthralling company, however brief their interaction was. A particularly vindictive fragment of his mind cursed him for feeling so, for letting his somber memories of Thera be eclipsed so easily.

He was all too eager to turn his thoughts away from that, focusing intently on the woman before him again. Her eyes were elsewhere, the pregnant silence she left hanging between them possibly carrying any number of meanings.

Finally, she relented, at least implicitly confirming his suspicions. "I came here to see if anyone was in port, maybe willing to let me tag along on their next voyage out. But this place looks like a ghost town."

"Aye," he nodded in agreement. He too had taken note of just how empty Dawnstar seemed, certainly in comparison to a city like Markarth. Thoring's outburst from a few days ago did come to mind- perhaps it was because of the war. "But what will you do now?"

It was question for himself as much as it was for her, now that he mentioned it. His eyes flickered down to the fallen coin that the woman had returned to him, unable to deflect the concerns about his personal conundrum anymore. How was he going to buy passage out to the sea if there was no one to take him?

She seemed to realize the same thing, peering at him more intently. Gauging him.

"I could ask the same of you."

He did not shy away from her judgement this time, meeting her eyes directly even as the full weight of the doubts and questions and insecurities which had tenuously swirled around in his mind came crashing down on him.

"I don't have much of an answer to give. This has all been quite sudden for me." He trailed off, intending to leave it at that but reconsidering soon after. They wouldn't get anywhere if they both just bounced vague answers off of each other. "I had a dream tonight, a nightmare, really. It was bizarre, as though it was… trying to tell me something," he realized, more to himself than anyone, as he took the time to actually recount the events of it. "I couldn't understand most of it. It was too much to take in. I felt like I was drowning in it all, in… the sea," he said, hesitantly adding the last detail. At what point had he been told it was the Sea of Ghosts?

"That does sound quite strange."

"It is. I wouldn't have thought much of it had the innkeeper not told me he'd had the same dreams. About the Sea of Ghosts."

The woman's gaze had softened somewhat, Cedric noted, her lips pursing in a gesture which did not seem as scornful as he'd expected.

"I don't have anywhere else to go," he admitted. "I don't know what else I am to do. I was a slave for all my life." He let the damning confession fly free throughout the inn, with only the faint sound of crackling fire to mask it from any prying ears. His heart thumped as he realized just how dangerous that was, and yet at the same time it felt as though a weight had been lifted off his chest. The chain which he'd fished out of the sea felt less like it was bound to just him.

Maybe the woman wasn't fated to be in whatever thing he'd fallen into. But was it so wrong of him to ask for her help?

 _Yes,_ a part of his mind screamed at him. Nothing else offered him an answer to that question.

And so he left it there, saying nothing more despite the rising urge to outright plea to this stranger for aid. Plea to lend him her strength, as Thera had. He fought the snivelling grimace crawling into his expression.

Despite his reluctance to say it aloud, she seemed to be able to see right through him with those piercing green eyes of hers.

"I know of an old jetty some ways north of Solitude, along the shoreline. It's… well, I know nobody  _else_ would be making use of it."

His heart seemed to beat in tandem with her footsteps as she strode over to him, her lean and powerful figure towering over his limply sitting form.

"I can't tell you everything. But I could take you along… for a little bit."

His eyes trailed over to the cask peeking over her shoulder, the instinctive urge to reject her offer, only now try and salvage the ragged pride he'd dragged behind him, soiled and bloodied over the years. As much as he wanted help,  _needed_  it, the last thing he wanted was to be just one more burden on someone else. He grew ever more conscious of his bony fingers and twiggy arms. His paltry collection of coins, to his numb nostrils, still heavy with the coppery scent of death. He had little he could offer in the way of help to her in return.

A thin smile worked its way over her lips when he did not answer immediately, her eyes lighting up with an intoxicating warmness, her understanding too good to be true. Too good for him, certainly. "Don't worry. I could use the company. Just as long you're alright with being in the dark."

_Without the dark, there can be no light._

He nodded.

* * *

 

The snow crunched beneath his boots as they trudged out of Dawnstar, the lone guard watching over the road out offering nothing more than a cursory warning about being on the alert travelling at this time of day. The mysterious woman, whose name Cedric did not even know yet, thanked and dismissed the guard with a courteous grace that Cedric would not have managed had he been caught leaving alone.

Just another reason he was thankful for her presence, he supposed.

The fresh, chilling air had eased the pain on his conscience somewhat, transforming a sliver of the guilt into gratitude. Still, he could not yet muster the strength to convey that gratitude to her. It was little comfort to him to see her hunch over much in the way he did as they began their trek into the deepening snow, working their way off the thinly indented roads and towards the trees, where the faint wails of the ocean winds swirled beyond.

As soon as they left earshot of the guard, Cedric cast a final, parting gaze back towards the port town, his eyes instinctively trailing towards the lonely inn sitting up on the snowy slope, peeking over the walls. He called to mind the first time he'd been in the inn, the last words that strangely armored figure had offered to Thoring before leaving.

It was a bizarre thought which crossed his mind, regarding a man which he'd hardly known for even three days, and spoken to for an even smaller fraction of that time.

Cedric closed his hands into fists over his chest, clutching the chain tightly towards him, embracing its scalding chill.

He decided, at the very least, that he would gladly bear this curse in Thoring's stead.

"Stay safe, friend," he whispered to the sea breeze.

He felt an eerie bristle flow through the pines around them, racing through to the chain clutched to his chest. It was a fleeting, barely discernable wind which touched upon his ears in rapid response.

_"And we would have no purpose."_


	6. Chapter 5

The numbness in Cedric's cheeks began to thaw as light hues of pink swam into the sea just beyond the formless trail they followed, the gravel beneath his boots glimmering with the same colors.

A loud growl rumbled out from his stomach, bubbling over the ever-present roar of the sea. He pursed his lips and held his eyes even more strongly on the moist pebbles he treaded over, well-aware of a pair of green eyes now watching him.

The rhythmic crunch of the woman's footsteps slowed, falling out of pace with his own. Seeing no other choice, lest he quite clumsily walk right past- or worse,  _into_ her, Cedric turned his gaze up.

Her eyes shone tenderly with an inkling of concern, brows gently furrowed as she studied him.

He noted, with no small amount of silent awe, that her lips had gained the lightest tinge of rose in the rays of the morning sun. A breeze swirled by, taking a few stray locks of her raven hair and splaying them out against the canvas of the dark blue sky from beneath her hood.

"You alright?"

He blinked, snapping himself out from his breathless trance. Before he could think to answer, another rumble sounded out from his stomach, prompting an embarrassed grimace from him.

"Oh. Right. You… haven't eaten since we left."

"Yeah," he said sheepishly, even as the woman rubbed the back of her hooded neck in a gesture that suggested she felt equally flustered. Why she did so eluded him.

He raised a hand to shield his eyes from the flaring sun, its orange warmth beginning to glimmer on the waves. He winced upon seeing how thinly stretched his skin was over his fingers, the harsh rays of coming daylight revealing the lingering weakness in his arms all too starkly.

"Come on. Let's head inland a little," said the woman, a curious grimace washing over her serene features as she pointed towards the fog-shrouded treeline. "The trees ought to shield us from the su- the wind a bit. And the marshes further in are teeming with all sorts of critters."

He didn't follow her train of thought, but he followed in her footsteps. The gravel beneath his boots gave way to moist soil, uneven mounds which shifted and sunk under his weight.

He hesitated as thin tendrils of mist grasped at his sleeves, their warmness washing over his cold and dry skin with an eerie familiarity. The smell of the wet earth, even though it was tinged by a saltiness he wasn't used to, didn't help to keep his mind from wandering back to the rich floors between the valleys of the Reach. However brief his time spent out there had been.

He squinted, finding it difficult to take his eyes off the treacherously loose soil he walked on. One foot after the other, his legs churned through the shaky dirt, fighting to keep him in a comfortable distance behind the quiet footsteps of the hooded woman. The terrain didn't seem to prove nearly as difficult for her, the footprints she left behind looking like neat engravings in firm snow while Cedric trampled over them.

She must have noticed his difficulty in keeping up, whether from his sludging footsteps or breathless heaving, he couldn't tell. "It's tough terrain to navigate, but there should be some dry patches large enough for us to set up camp at. The branches on the trees here make for decent firewood too."

"Oh," he grunted back, starting to catch onto her intentions. He spared a glance around him, surveying their immediate surroundings hopefully for some dry ground at the risk of stumbling in the damp earth. The mist loomed around them in thin curtains, faintly blurring his view of the distance beyond the sprawl of the black soil he continued to trudge through. The silhouettes of the trees cast eerie shadows, their gnarly limbs intertwining above and around him. Their bark was calloused, craggy black rinds contorting in swirls not unlike the wisps of mist beneath them.

"Over here," she called out, turning Cedric's attention over to where she waded into a cluster of grass which stretched up to her waist. The rustling cacophony that followed in her wake seemed to promise dryness, and so Cedric steeled himself, pushing through the last strides which separated him from her. He winced as he strode into their midst, faintly yellow fibres crackling at the rough furs of his clothes.

But even as he trampled them, their turgid stalks cushioning his footsteps, he could feel the soil underneath hardening, packing together densely. Rays of sunlight were beginning to peek through the thin sheen of fog around him, the nebulous blur they swirled around in receding a little more into the distance.

He momentarily forgot about the void welling in his stomach as he saw the woman pause in her stride, a palpable distance having grown between them now, leaning against the thick black trunk of a low hanging tree. She cast him a fleeting backwards glance through the gnarly branches, her brows furrowed, the whites of her eyes seeming to have gained a yellow glimmer…?

The thought left as quickly as it had come to his easily bent mind, the glare of the sun causing him to blink and squint away the sight. All that was left was a fleeting chill running down his spine, reverberating as though it travelled through his chest from the chain tucked away in the recesses of his coat.

A cold breath escaped his lips as he stalked up, his legs unconsciously shaking as he approached the woman. Her back was hunched over, her hooded head craned away from him, the thick layers of black cloth muffling the reedy gulps of air she inhaled. The thin cask she carried on her back rose and fell, betraying the heaving motions of her body.

"Are you okay?" In trying to stop the shaking anxiousness chaining down his lungs from slipping into his voice, his words ended up coming out as dead as the ice beyond the trees.

He needn't have bothered, really. "I'm fine," was the only response he got, measured and collected, as though she wasn't clearly weakening to a point even lower than he was.

The thought sent a fresh wave of panic over him, the rush of it momentarily overtaking the numbness that had sunk its claws into his bones. "You really don't seem well…" he ventured cautiously, walking up to her side and trying to peer around the obscuring hood enshrouding her head. He caught a glimpse of watery red dribbling from her pointed chin before she turned the other way.

His brows furrowed at the gesture, a spark of indignancy from the back of his mind, quickly stubbed out as it was, breaking through to the numbed white features of his face. He might've still said something had his eyes not caught the glint of glass. An empty flask disappearing around the woman's waist into the hidden recesses of a satchel tucked away in her robes.

"What is that?"

It seemed enough for her to drop the façade. Her head turned slowly towards him, Cedric's heart thumping with a peculiar dread. His mind raced with all manner of unsightly things that she could have been trying to hide from him under that hood at the moment.

A breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding in wheezed out from his dry lips as he found her snow white visage bearing her usual smile, green eyes softening as she met his gaze.

"I… think I might've caught something on the road from before. Ataxia or something. Nothing a quick herb brew couldn't fix," she said, holding up the very flask she'd been trying to hide from him a moment ago. She gave it a cheeky little waggle in the air, sunlight strobing off its plain surface.

She was the same striking image he'd found himself so easily smitten by. And yet he couldn't help but remember the pale blood-red that he saw running from her mouth. The baleful crimson glint he'd caught in her eyes the night before… the same blazing shade he'd seen in the cold teardrop glare from his dreams.

"Why didn't you say anything?"

She faltered, but he couldn't bring himself to continue pressing her. She seemed fine now. That was all that mattered, wasn't it?

"I'm sorry. I didn't want to worry you. Though I guess that didn't really work out."

 _Gods damn her._ Try as he did to suppress it, a flutter broke into the thumping rhythm of his heartbeat as she bit her lip, the porcelain skin of her free hand bashfully playing with a few strands of raven hair that had come free from her hood.

It was all it took to throw away the rest of his worries and questions. He found the edges of his own mouth twitching upwards.

At least until a renewed growl from his stomach rumbled forth.

The woman's smile blossomed into a beaming grin, to him, more radiant than the sun itself.

"Now come on, help me get some branches off this tree. Let's see if we can get a fire going and fill up your stomach."

* * *

 

Cedric had been a little nervous at the woman's proposition that she venture further inland on her own, considering her earlier bout of weakness. But even so, he figured he wouldn't be of much help to her if she did run into trouble- no doubt she thought the same.

So it was that he was left sitting in the small clearing they'd made in the grass, tending to the queer flame the woman had ignited with naught but her bare hands. Feeding the ravenous magickal fires every few moments with the sizeable stock of craggy branches they'd foraged.

He supposed  _that_ was another thing that put him at ease. Anything that gave her trouble, she could probably incinerate with a flick of her wrist. She really was something.

A husky breath escaped his lips as he inched closer to the flame, savoring the warmth it radiated upon his gaunt cheeks. The coldness of the soil still bled through his leggings, but even that hardly fazed him anymore.

He felt safe. Even as the wind from beyond the trees seeped through the fog and slipped between the twisted black trunks to graze against his ears, carrying its ever-eerie tune.

The weight of the chain pressed yet heavier against him, its queer cold stubbornly refusing to release its grasp as the warmth of the fire embraced the flesh and fur around it.

* * *

 

It wasn't much longer before the woman returned, with the largest crab he'd ever seen cradled limply in her arms. Its big, meaty claws looked large enough to crush the frail little things he sometimes stumbled upon in the damp corners of the mines.

They didn't have anything to boil it in though, so it sat directly in the fire, orange tongues of flame licking at the rough surface of its grey chitin. Crusts of salt peeled off from it.

Cedric's stomach growled as soon as he caught the scent of its charring carapace, earning him a chuckle from the woman. Her laughter touched upon his ears in a graceful peal, the sound coming like sweet music after the unsettling whispers from the sea he'd had stifled in his mind for so long.

"You know, I almost mistook that for the crab growling for a moment. It looks a lot more menacing staring at you from inside the flames, doesn't it?"

It was a silly remark to hear her make, but as soon as Cedric caught the crab's glazed-over glare, its beady black eyes staring soullessly at him in front of a fiery backdrop, he couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of it. It felt good. Hoarse and crackling as it was from a tongue that had not known laughter for years, it gave off an intoxicating resonance with the woman seated beside him.

"It's going to be great, I'm telling you. A bit messy without a proper grill or pan of sorts, but it's better than anything you could have served at a banquet hall."

"I can only imagine," he said, inhaling the salty aromas as they came off from the fire in steaming waves. The smells were wild, exotic, the crab cooking without any seasoning to muddy its natural flavors.

He was content to simply sit there, taking in the smells, the close presence of the woman warming him more than the fire itself.

"It's been ages since I've done anything like this," she mused out loud suddenly. "My father used to take me out hunting. Taught me how to track prey. Shoot with a bow."

Cedric turned around, watching her curiously as she trailed off. The flames flickered in her eyes, betraying a glimmer of somberness.

"He was… a hard teacher. Never one to really give praise, but quick to point out mistakes."

"I'm sorry to hear that," said Cedric, his voice ringing with a quiet sincerity.

The woman's smile widened, but the sparks of joy that usually danced in her green irises were absent. "It's not to say he was an equally tough father. Quite the opposite, really. When we just… sat around the campfire after the hunts. And just talked about things. It was one of the only times we spoke of anything outside of my studies. But we used to go hunting a lot."

He saw her hand gently reach towards the cask which she'd slung off her back and laid between him and her, her fingers elegantly running along its marbled wood surface. "Those days didn't last as long as they should have."

His breath left his lips and did not return as she fixed him with her wistful gaze, pale beauty tempered with a mixture of sadness and happiness he couldn't fully comprehend. He just stared in silence, unsure of what to say.

He didn't need to say anything though, as the woman seemed to snap out of some kind of trance, chuckling sheepishly while glancing away. "I'm waxing nostalgic. Sorry."

"It's alright," he responded with a sincere smile spreading over his lips.

They lapsed back into silence, but the thumping in Cedric's heart did not still so easily.

The flames crackled, and the winds whispered in the distance. Echoing, beckoning to him.

He was on the precipice of losing himself in trying to make sense of the maddening dream-speak still swirling around in his head when she broke the stillness between them.

"Still, I'm glad you're here. It's good to be reminded of some of the sweeter memories of the past. Even if it is a sort of bittersweetness."

Again, he wasn't sure what to say, but his heartbeat was drumming up to a thunderous crescendo. He couldn't even find the courage to look at her - his gaze was instead fixed on the baleful black eyes of the fearsome mudcrab in the fire.

"Oh. Um. I hope that didn't come out too suddenly. All of it, I mean. I'm... sure a lot of what I went on about probably doesn't mean much to you."

"No, no, it's fine. I'm glad to be here. And to hear you talk," he stammered out in a way he hoped came off half as elegantly as her own bashful rambling.

Still, he found a smile crawling onto his face. That seemed to be happening a lot lately.

He looked over to her, and found that his hammering heartbeat only seemed to grow in intensity when he saw her mouth mirroring his.

"My name's Cedric, by the way."

"Oh. That's a wonderful name."

Shamelessly, his lips split open into a toothy grin.

"What about you? What's your name?"

She tilted her head in a curious gesture, her eyes sparkling as she considered his question. It wasn't her initial hesitation which almost crushed the joy swelling inside him.

"You can call me Sera."

Her name reminded him too much of Thera.


	7. Chapter 6

"Come on, sleepyhead. Back to work."

Cedric groaned, the noise from his throat seeming to muffle and distort in the lingering shroud of unconsciousness wrapped around him. It was like warm mist touching upon his skin.

He buried his face deeper into the sweat-matted furs, mumbling feebly and grasping for the warmth of the woman who yet lay with him. His fingers moved true, brushing against warm skin and the hardened muscle underneath. It earned him a husky chuckle which echoed throughout the expanse of his cavernous mind.

_Don't go._

His words died on the numbness of his tongue.

"But we have to go," Thera responded so matter-of-factly, even as she shifted about and wrapped her arms around him in a firm, steely embrace. His vision blurred and his eyes closed as he nuzzled against the watery mirage of her figure.

_It isn't fair._

His fingers, blistered and chipped, reached out to trace the hard contours of her face. Her… blazing green eyes. Supple white skin, cold to the touch. Radiating with the chill of the sea, flooding through his flesh from his fingertips. Wrapping around his lungs like a broken chain.

His eyes snapped open, heart pumping shallowly in his ears as he gazed upon the eerily beautiful visage of Sera, her shadowy dark hair enveloping her snowy skin in a crisp clarity that defied the murkiness around them. A cool ocean breeze sent locks of raven fluttering into his eyes.

" _Without the dark-"_

"Where's Thera?" He croaked, suddenly aware of the moonlit gravel sprawled beneath him, and the roiling waves of the sea brushing against his arms. They tugged at his sleeves.

She cocked her head at him quizzically, a queer smile crawling over her glistening ruby lips. A thin trickle of pasty blood ran down to her chin.

"Who's Thera? My name's Sera. Remember?"

His breaths grew heavier, huskier, raggedly bouncing around inside the void of his mind as he tried to recall- tried the remember- her coppery tan skin. Stony set jaw. Her jellied eyes drooping out from her sockets, her skull eviscerated by the wicked flanged head of a mace.

He choked on a cry of panic, his limbs failing to respond to the sudden urge he had to run, dive into the murk of his memories in search of what he  _did_  know. He  _knew_ what Thera looked like!

"Cedric. Listen."

The otherworldly coldness of the waves pulled him into its steady current, his numbed body unable to fight it. Sera floated in a formless mass, tendrils of hair pushing her alongside him. Carrying him out to sea on a bed of moonshadows.

" _We have purpose."_

The deep black water thundered out to him. The cold raced up to his neck, threatening to plunge him into swirling nothingness.

"I don't understand," he whimpered through the colorless fluid flooding his lungs. Swallowing his eyes. The last he saw of Sera's image was that of a red-eyed hag, the bloody shade of her irises searing into his sight even as all else faded away.

The chain lashed to his chest pulled him deeper into the shadows, binding his limbs, restraining them from throwing him around in the murk without aim. The descent was slow, steady, and yet he felt as though he was somehow rising out of his own shell of a body. Tethered to his flesh only by a broken string of star-metal links.

The lingering crimson dots that flared in his sight blossomed out into sharp teardrops. Hard lenses which peered coldly in his direction. Pitiless. Remorseless. They cast rays which pierced through his waning flesh, a gaze which did not seem to even register or acknowledge him. And yet Cedric felt a strange, faint presence from the shadowy form behind those eyes.  _Two_  heartbeats pumping, yet weighed down by… something. A resonance that fell in chilling rhythm with his own heart, beating against the grip of the chain that now bound it.

Its voice, finally unobscured to him by the warping distortions of the sea, echoed with a solemnness that was yet blackened by the metallic snarl of its glinting chrome teeth.

" _Without the Emperor, there is nothing."_

* * *

* * *

 

A shaky breath flooded into Cedric's lungs as his eyes shot open, a thrashing twitch coursing through his body as it regained its senses. Cold, dry grass pressed against his cheek as he flopped onto his side, coughs wracking his body and threatening to churn out the bits of crab meat sitting heavy in his belly. His hands quivered against the matted fibres on the ground, an unearthly chill hanging over the drowsily stirring blood in his limbs. He retched, yet expelled nothing but puffs of air.

His hands scrabbled through his coat, grasping desperately for the icy cold touch of the chain he kept inside. When he found it, rough tips of his nails grazing against its metal, he wrenched it out with a force that left it dangling in front of his eyes. Its end, the single link broken by a jagged edge, rocked back and forth like a pendulum.

The steady, cyclical motions stilled his breathing into reedy rasps. His stomach, though leaden with bricks of food, ceased its aching.

The chain's movements settled, leaving the dull silver links in a straight line which bisected the crimson spots that had burned themselves into his retinae. The spots receded past the chain, past the stalks of grass, the black trunks of the trees, and pressed themselves up against the dimming horizon. It was there that they coalesced into one, fading into a single star which glinted on the dark blue canvas of dusk.

He blinked, and then it was gone.

He heard gentle rustling from beside him, and he wasn't sure if he was ready to face the source of it after what he'd seen.

"Dreams again?" Sera prodded cautiously.

He practically drank in the sound of her voice, the crispness and bluntness of it utterly unlike the queerly monotone words that the pale dream-image of her spouted to him.

"Yes," he croaked, phlegm congealing his words. He coughed and retched it away into the grass. Feeling returned to his fingers, and he dug them into the ground, grasping at straws of grass as he inhaled mouthfuls of frigid air. "It's the second time I've had it now."

She walked around to his front, her footsteps ever so gentle and giving him a wide berth. Though if she held any disgust for him in this pitiful state, she did not show it, green eyes glimmering with nothing but concern.

Her gaze inevitably wandered to the same spot his was still fixed on, the chain which dangled in front of his face.

"I found it after the first dream," he murmured. "I saw it. Floating in the sea. And I could hear whispers from something else out there too. Like it was some sort of strange chant, carried on the wind."

"Like it was calling to you?"

He shook his head, finally managing to take his eyes off the chain. He let his hand fall limp, and the links of metal thumped softly against the grass. "No. No, I don't think so."

He paused, and stared straight into the horizon again, watching as tiny dots of light began to speckle the darkening sky. The one which he saw upon awakening was yet nowhere to be found.

"I went to the shore that night. I reached into the water, blindly. I don't know what it was that drove me, that… showed me where this thing was. But it wasn't those voices."

"But… there was something else? Some _one_ else?"

"Yes. There was."

His brows furrowed as he remembered the disembodied voice from the first dream, and the witch-image that visited him in the dream he just had.

"In both dreams," he whispered, the certainty he spoke with doing nothing to comfort him.

He stiffened as Sera inched closer, her lithe hand elegantly, slowly reaching out- towards him. His breath caught in his throat as her fingers brushed against his. The sensation didn't last nearly as long as he'd wanted, deep down, as much as he tried to deny it- her hand retracted quickly, carrying with it the tail end of that accursed chain.

He wondered if she felt the same cold that he did holding it.

It wasn't an impossibility- the expression she bore was heavy with trepidation, eyes wide and shining with what seemed to be both fear  _and_ curiosity. He supposed that second part was where she and him differed.

Her hands, delicate as they were, grasped the metal firmly and unwaveringly. She did not flinch from its otherworldliness. Did not shun it. Did not bend to it.

The links jingled with a chime that rang with a sinister undertone to his ears as she ran a finger down the length of the metal. He felt his spine resonating with the reverberations.

" _And we would have no purpose."_

…

"I think you should come with me," she stated suddenly, gently easing the chain back into his hands. He couldn't offer any response other than merely stare back at her, her beautiful lips spouting words that were going over his head. All that seemed to register was what she just said earlier- words that sounded too good to be true. Though one part of her speech snapped him out of his trance. "There's… a good chance that you've caught the attention of the Daedra. Which might not be a bad thing. If we can figure out what they want with you."

"Daedra?" He repeated hoarsely. Just saying the word left an uneasiness lingering on his tongue. Or maybe that was just the leftover taste of charred crab.

It took a moment longer to realize that it wasn't the first time he'd heard it spoken before.

Words passed around the mines in Markarth had said that the mysterious hooded man in the city- the Vigilant- been looking for something. Looking for Daedra.

And it wasn't too long ago that he caught wind of the Hall of the Vigilants being burned down.

It seemed like a terrible coincidence in a string of very strange happenings he'd been experiencing as of late.

Had it been anyone else telling him that such things- whatever they were- were interfering with his life…

He probably would have just put his head down, slept, and prayed to gods which cared not for him that it would just be over.

But it wasn't just anyone telling him about it- so he listened carefully, and opted to keep his mouth shut.

Sera appeared to catch onto his ignorance of the matter, perhaps from the blank stare he fixed her with, and mercifully spared him from a lengthy explanation. "Let's just say, it sounds like some very powerful beings are interested in you. Which ones, and why, well, I'm not sure if I can say for certain right now. But I know… people who can help."

He wanted to just say yes. Gods only knew how much he needed this woman in his life, and here she was offering to take him along with her suddenly. It was, for all intents and purposes, as he'd hoped ever since she walked in through the inn's door the night prior.

"What kind of people?"

It was not blind suspicion which drove him to question her. It was that smallest glimpse of sadness he caught as she trailed off, the muted somberness in her voice, the shadows of her dark eyelashes ever so slightly cresting over her irises.

She hesitated- fully breaking away from his piercing gaze now. His heart sunk for her even as he tried to keep it aloft on his own turn of good fortune. She was so willing to give concern, but dared not ask for any in return.

"My family. They own a castle just off the shore of Solitude."

"A castle?"

"Yes. Yes. Cedric, I'm…"

Memories from their talk over the campfire last night bubbled over his surprise at the revelation that she was  _royalty_ \- just about the farthest cry from his feeble existence in the world. For once, he stifled his ragged pride, the soiled humility within him which urged him to keep quiet in the presence of someone so far beyond him. He forgot the coldness of the chain which bafflingly still lingered on his chest like a fresh scar, the utter incomprehensibility of his situation.

Slowly, he pushed himself off the ground, bringing himself, sitting, up to her height. He dared to bring his head in closer, lower, peer under her hood. She was not bothered by the intrusion, but seemed so bizarrely shamed- by what, he wasn't even sure- that she could not meet his gaze.

"Well, I suppose you certainly look the part of a princess."

He was rewarded with seeing her eyes light up in surprise. Darting back over to him- and in complete disregard for the disparity between them, beaming with a surge of delight.

"Is that so?"

The sudden shift in her demeanor caught him off guard, but it was with equal parts embarrassment and shameless  _happiness_ that he ended up grinning ear-to-ear back at her. "Of course."

She did look away again, but the smile on her lips lingered for a moment. He supposed that was the best reaction he could've gotten- and he was more than content with it.

They sat in silence for a while longer, as darkness enveloped the sky in a deep black canvas that truly let the stars shine. Her skin stood staunchly white out in the pale light of two moons. He found his breathing easing up as he almost lost himself in staring at the blemishless surface of it alone, the eeriness left lingering in his mind from the dream he awoke from muting itself.

"There's a lot more to all of this I can't say yet, Cedric. But I promise you this: I can help you. I just need you to-"

"It's alright. I trust you."

Her smile glimmered like radiant silver to his eyes. To think that his words could bring her some measure of contentness, bafflingly, eased the burdens on his mind even more than hearing she was willing to take him along with her.

A part of him bitterly noted it was about the only thing he  _could_ do for her in return- another part took a boyish pride in it. He decided he would rather listen to that latter part. It made forgetting everything else for the time being easier.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Imma let you guys in on a secret, I really don't like Cedric
> 
> Or not really so much him as much as writing from his perspective
> 
> fuqboiiiiiiiiiiiiiii


	8. Chapter 7

_This isn't going to work._

It was a grim thought that crossed Serana's mind. Maybe it was the direness behind it that made it seem so certain, and not merely a possibility conjured up by restless musings.

A gentle breeze swept past her face, pricking softly at the deadened nerves along her skin.

Though she supposed some people found certainty in things even vaguer than that. The Elder Scroll she bore in the wooden cask on her back attested to that much.

It was with that bitter observation that her eyes swept over to the horizon, where the sea reached up to touch the star-speckled sky. Where the spires of the old castle yet lay shrouded in shadows.

Though she could not see it amongst the silhouettes of glaciers, standing imposingly on the inky surface of the distant water, she knew it was out there. Her hand absentmindedly slipped into the satchel she kept concealed with in her robes, fingers tumbling over emptied flasks and barren twigs. They did not stop until they found the bloodied gold crest buried deep inside. A metal icon she had immediately recognized when she'd seen it on the corpse at the barren site of her reawakening- the same eight-pointed star adorning her own royal garments.

The Volkihar name still lived.

And if the craven bastards that woke her up were the kind to brazenly tout its crest around and prey on mortals in open daylight, that didn't leave her guessing who sat on the family castle's throne. Her hand recoiled from her satchel. Lush blooms of Deathbell brushed crisply against her knuckles on the way out. It was somehow still more pleasant than having to grasp the soiled symbol of her family any longer.

It was telling that she had mourned more for the fallen mortals outside her tomb than she did for the bodies that bore the sigil of her kin.

_Then why even go back home at all?_

She sped up her trudging pace over the moonlit gravel of the shore, the small surge of anger from within her chest further powering her strides.

Anger at what, or who, she wasn't even sure of. She supposed that was reason as any to return. One of the many things she'd been taught so long ago was to never let something as powerful as anger simply fester.

…

She couldn't remember if it was Father or Mother who'd said that.

…

Though perhaps the answer for the question- 'why go back' - now also partially laid with the pair of stumbling footsteps behind her.

_This isn't going to work._

She craned her neck back, not breaking in her stride, peering around the dark edges of her hood to study the downtrodden mortal crea-  _man-_  which followed her. 'Cedric'.

Messy black hair obscured his eyes, but she could tell that his gaze was downcast, small mouth and pointed chin barely tucked inside in the furs of his coat. Thin wisps of vapor blew out from under his collar, the exertions he made in trying to keep up with her all too evident.

She slowed her stride somewhat, half in thought, half out of the desire to stop the discomfort welling inside her from just seeing the man struggle. A cringe slipped past her stony set lips momentarily as she watched him stumble over a branch of driftwood in the dark. He didn't look up, and scrambled to put himself back into his plodding march, but the quiet yelp he'd puffed out upon tripping made the attempt to hide his blunder moot.

_Why do you hide your weakness?_

The question never did leave her mouth. A nagging feeling at the back of her head told her it would just make things worse, if anything else.

Her pace slowed to a casual stroll, the coursing urgency in her legs fighting against the restraint she put into every step made towards letting Cedric catch up. She tugged the tired edges of her mouth into a hesitant smile when he finally met her gaze, the gesture this time around being more to just put him at ease than borne of any joy. Too much was on her mind now for that.

"How're you holding up? My cooking isn't getting the better of you, is it?"

It was small relief to see him huff out a laugh, icy blue eyes coming dimly alight with some life as he settled into a comfortable walk beside her.

"No, no, not at all. I'm very grateful for it."

"Mm. That's good."

Cedric seemed to be making a conscious effort to stand straighter now, the crest of his messy black hair almost coming up to her forehead at his full height. His face, normally so gaunt and perpetually frowning, had relaxed into a boyish visage that actually looked quite sharp in the moonlight. Some curious splotches of color had even seemed to bleed into his cheeks, warming the sickly white of his skin.

His voice remained silent, but she was glad that he seemed a good deal more comfortable now at least. The pace she'd set must've been more taxing on him than she'd thought. She fought a back a grimace. Loathe as she was to admit it, she really had grown out of touch with the hardships of being mortal.

She tried not to watch him too intently, lest he find her gaze unsettling- or worse yet, see the true colors behind her eyes. The reminder of that being a very real possibility made the smile she wore seem that much heavier to hold up.

But she didn't let it deter her.

She drew in a deep breath, numbed nerves barely able to appreciate the chilling night air, the cold moistness lingering over the barren expanse of the shore.

"I used to love walking along the shore like this," the sudden yearning she had for feeling the rush of crispness into her lungs slipping past the tense restraints that she'd seemed to clamp down on her mind and body alike.

"Oh."

His eyes bore the shade of the shallows between her and the deep blue sea. Pale, faintly glistening, curiously rapt with attention at her sudden remark. She realized after a moment more of silent staring that he was waiting for her to continue.

"Most nights I'd go out further. Just a little into the water, where the tide would barely touch against the shore. Boots off a little further inland, so they wouldn't get soaked through when I went back home."

Her toes, stiff with undeath, flexed longingly inside their cold confines. She inhaled a mouthful of tasteless vapor, letting her memories guide her feelings. The taste of salt on her tongue, tarnished by blood but warm with nostalgia.

"That feeling of the edges of the sea against the bare soles of my feet- brushing against them, enveloping them in ice. And to think that was just the periphery of it- distant roars roiling all along the coast like a great beast, the rest of its body shrouded in the night. It was terrifying."

"…terrifying?"

She chuckled, partly at her younger self. "Yeah. Seems a bit strange, doesn't it?"

"That you say you used to love that feeling, a little," he responded with a wide grin. His teeth were faintly stained, but that did little to snuff out the warmth in the gesture.

"Maybe it wasn't so much the terror itself," she mused wistfully. Her boot picked up a small flat stone, sending it skipping across the slick beach. She could almost imagine it sending ripples across the surface of the water instead. "As much as… overcoming it. There was always something mysterious about the sea to me, something that kept drawing me back. It was intimidating. Monstrous, cold, dark. It took me a while, but I came to realize there was a stark beauty to it all."

"Ah. I can relate to that I think."

Oh. Right. The dreams.

She tilted her head quizzically at him when she noticed his smile wasn't fading as she'd expected it to, with her very much unintentional reminder of his current predicament. It was admirable that he could manage that. She wished she could do the same.

"You wanna try going for a dip in the water then?" She asked, a spark of mischief breaking through the monotonous grimness looming over her thoughts.

"Only if you'd like to join me. My lady."

' _My lady.'_ There was a moment of silence which followed that bizarre statement he made, for her, memories she'd thought long lost of her handmaiden sparking back into mind, for him, his grin withering into a sheepish smile as the color in his cheeks deepened into a healthy red.

She didn't know why, but eventually the words lit up a chuckle in her chest. A hearty snicker which only grew in intensity the more it pounded on her bones. It spread over to Cedric like a plague.

Their shared laughter resonated on the still night air. Brief as it was, the release of that tension building inside her was welcome. Cathartic, almost.

…

_This isn't going to work._

No, maybe it wouldn't work. But she couldn't just leave him either.

…

He was… different. In some small ways maybe she saw a little of herself in him. Maybe that was why she'd let herself speak of the past to him. Maybe it was why he said he trusted her in return.

_Then tell him the truth._

She looked again to the ocean horizon, past the mirages of days long gone shimmering in the ripples, past the dim orange lights pockmarking the shadowy arch standing over the water. The looming shadow of Solitude's windmill seemed to grow larger with every step she took, the great structure standing taller than she remembered against the starry night sky.

They weren't far now. She wagered they could arrive as early as noon on the morrow, if the marshes inland were as peaceful as she'd last went in the day before.

_I can't._

…

Not yet.

She knew she couldn't hideit from him forever- he'd almost caught her as it was yesterday when the sun had hit her. When the hunger she'd staved off for too long, far longer even than she'd been schooled to, had come surging back in a burning, sanguine sear. And though he did not seem to truly catch on, she had felt the sudden shift in his demeanor- the tentative steps he crawled towards her with, the frozen fear radiating from his wide blue eyes.

It was always the nature of mortals to fear her. That hadn't changed since she'd been asleep. The corpses of those she'd found outside her tomb, dead frosted fingers clutching weapons etched with runes most hateful to her flesh, were a testament to that sad reality.

She pulled the edges of her robes tighter around her body, dipping her chin into the folds of the obscuring black cloth around her neck. There was no warmth to be found for her numb skin anymore, and if anything the cold was more soothing - but fleeting memories of that feeling yet brought some small comfort to her.

Sooner or later, she would have to tell Cedric, if she intended to follow through with her promise to help him. Gods only knew she would rather face down her father alone than say it, but she wasn't taking him along for her own benefit.

She couldn't bear to so much as look at him for the rest of the night.


	9. Chapter 8

The passing of night into day did not help to ease her mind. Although the initial chain of thoughts which put her into this foul mood had evaporated, the grim feelings they left behind yet hung over her like the clots of mist on the stale water they trudged through. Serana bit back a curse as her ears registered the sound of Cedric’s waterlogged boots sloshing in the mire behind her.

The tide had not been kind to the footpaths that wound through the coastal marsh.

Tiny ripples that came not from her own nor Cedric’s footfalls spattered against the murky surface of the water. A few pinpricks of cold droplets smacked against her face, just strong enough to register on the numbed skin of her cheeks. _Beautiful_. It was fucking raining now too.

She glanced back at Cedric, memories of the previous morning coming to mind as a wayward strand of her thoughts managed to recognize that he’d not eaten since. His hair dangled in front of his face in moist clumps of black locks, the light downpour of rain already setting its shallow claws on his figure. The dim blue eyes behind them looked up at her quietly.

“Hungry?” She called out softly over the din of splashing water. She did her best to fight back a grimace as he nodded.

She craned her neck back around in line with her body, not slowing in her stride through the ankle-deep water as she surveyed their surroundings. Finding another mudcrab could be tricky- unless she was lucky enough to literally trip over one, she’d have to scour the banks of mud underneath the rippling murk for any sign of them. Either that, or double back closer towards shore where they’d be more visible.

Neither option seemed appealing- or feasible, given her intended timetable. But finding somewhere dry to leave Cedric first took priority regardless of what she went with.

It so happened that her keen eyes spotted a platform of man-shaped planks sitting on the water, just a few dozen strides ahead. The wood was a sturdy tan shade amongst the blurs of browns and greys of the marsh, a stout pine tree standing close to it on a small mound of mud. It could be just what they needed.

As she angled her path towards it however, she noticed the water splashing higher against the skirt of her robes. She looked down, and found indeed that it had risen up to her ankles, loosely tugging at the thick black cloth.

She held up a hand, open palm facing Cedric behind her in a gesture to keep him from coming closer. The splash of his footsteps slowed to a stop a comfortable distance away from her.

“I’m gonna go check out that platform over there,” she called out, still keeping her eyes trained on her surroundings. Taking note of the sparse tree coverage, the significant distance between her and their black trunks signalling where the land rose out of water. Too far for her liking. She wasn’t sure how long Cedric could last trudging through the water while hungry- though it hardly registered with her now, memories from long ago reminded her of just how cold it could still be in Hjaalmarch. They’d have to take their chances with this platform. “Water’s a little deep on approach, so stay back until I can figure out a path.”

“Oh… alright. Be safe, yeah?”

She nodded, though she wasn’t sure if he could see her do so. Her own safety wasn’t exactly at the forefront of her mind though, as her boots kicked up clouds of mud that swam around the hem of her skirt. She found herself silently thanking her mother for leaving her with a fairly sturdy set of travelling robes- the royal red cloth of her garments underneath would be spared from the brunt of the mire for now. It was a shame that the same could not be said for her boots. She could feel the grime of the swamp slowly pooling under and around her feet, wet debris chafing against her toes.

It was but a small discomfort, but given the circumstances, any discomfort was incredibly unwelcome.

She kept her eyes downwards, trying her best to discern footing from pitfall beyond the muddled reflection of herself and the overcast skies. Her feet probed the waters in front of her steadily and slowly, the faintly moist ends of her toes inside her boots sensing for what her eyes could not see.

It wasn’t as bad as she’d thought. She looked up after a slow minute or two of waddling, the platform she had her eyes on now more clearly propped up on a very slight incline rising out of the water. Strands of drowned and muddied grass poked out from underneath its subtly curved surface. Her head tilted as she got a better look at the structure, the rounded cavity of what was now registering to her as a ship hull’s porthole coming into view amongst the wet cracks etched into the wood.

Must have been quite the tide for it to have washed up here. Whatever wreckage it might’ve come from was nowhere in sight.  

She made it past the final few steps between her and the mud it sat upon without incident, her skirt trailing rivulets of brackish liquid onto the platform as she hoisted herself up on her right leg. Cautious as ever though, she gave the wood a few firm taps with her boots, listening to the creaks that ran up and down the striated fibres beyond the thudding impacts.  

Sturdy. She supposed it would have had to been to be part of a ship.

She wasn’t sure if it was the fatigue getting to her, or the fucking dreary weather, but there was something else… off, about it, that she wasn’t quite as certain about. She held off from signalling Cedric over, loathe as she was to leave him soaking in the swamp for longer like a flaccid washcloth.

Her eyes scanned the cracks in the wood, ugly and twisted, but not threatening to break the entire structure apart. She followed them up towards the rim of the porthole, and it was only then that she saw that the porthole in question rung itself around a slope which wound deeper under the planks she stood on, deep enough to be shrouded in shadow.

A cold lump registered in her stomach, a sure sign that her body was trying to warn her sluggish mind against tarrying. But her mind, ever so inquisitive, compelled her to investigate further. Her feet anchored her down from moving any closer though, and so it was that her eyes narrowed to peer closer at the porthole.

The edges of the wood were calloused. Small rents were carved into the otherwise smooth frame, cutting too deeply to be wrought by any storm.

And then she heard a _chittering_ sound from beneath her.

_Oh shit._

The clacking tapped upon the taut senses in her ears, muffled as it was by the wood between her and its source. Slowly, she eased her left boot back, wincing at the creaks it sent rumbling through as the clambering of chitin drew closer to the porthole.

It was good that she splashed back into the water when she did, steely nerves overriding her sense for delicacy and driving her dead muscles in a frantic retreat. The wood she stood upon moments ago lurched upwards as a pair of wicked black mandibles, thick as her arms and serrated like a dremora’s blade, ripped through, hungrily gnawing at splinters which were _melting_ in a soup of inky fluid.

“Sera!”

“Stay back!” Serana called out to Cedric as she hastily backpedaled. Her boots sloshed loudly through the water, the uneven mud tugging at her heels with every step. She rolled her arms in slow, graceful motions in stark contrast to her legs, letting centuries of latent magicka course through to her fingertips. This clearly wasn’t just any mudcrab she could handle with a dagger.

A sharp crack rang across the water like a peal of thunder as the creature in question forced its head through the opening it had torn for itself. Beady blue eyes twinkled in the steadying drizzle of rain as it strained to pull the rest of its body out against the creaking ship hull that rung around its neck.

It was with a pang of disgust that she managed to match the creature’s four-legged profile with something she’d seen in a bestiary from studies long ago, the chaurus breaking free of its wooden binds in a grotesque display of skittering legs and convulsing chitin. Its fat tail trailed out sluggishly, the pincers at its end dragging pieces of sundered wood along with it.

She starkly remembered the artist’s illustrations from the book, as though it were etched into pristine parchment- the repugnance that it had inspired in her as a child was nothing compared to the gut-twisting abhorrence welling in her now. The chaurus stood almost as tall and wide as a cavalry horse, minute motions in its flesh rippling across the slick surface of its armored hide.

The currents of magickal power within her arms reached a crescendo, manifesting as a ball of arcing electricity in her palm- yet she held off from striking the creature, also slowing her retreat into a quiet glide over the mud.

A small part of her mind tempered the revulsion lighting the ends of her skin on fire with a puzzling sense of wonderment as she watched it idle upon its perch for a moment, the luminescent orbs that were its eyes seeming to be lost in scanning the mire around it. A thick neck held its head high, segmented plates heaving as it held a posture that could have almost come off as noble had it been any other creature.

The words that she could recall reading about chaurus had said that they dwelled in only the deepest and darkest of underground recesses. She reckoned the hole that it had crawled out of couldn’t have been any deeper than a coffin’s resting place. And the marks on the chunk of derelict ship hull seemed to suggest that this particular specimen had purposely dragged the wood over its shallow lair with those wicked pincers.

Had it been stranded in the marsh somehow?

A hoarse scream pierced the moist air after a tense moment of silence, the churning sound of thrashing limbs in water behind her following quickly in suit.

Panic flared in her chest at the noise, the voice, shrill and twisted by fear as it was undoubtedly that of Cedric. She couldn’t tell without looking back if he’d somehow been attacked or simply overcome with terror at the sight before him. Yet she did not dare look away from the chaurus when its eerie blue gaze snapped towards her, its mandibles rattling together in a dangerous cacophony that seemed to reverberate through her bones. Black liquid dripped out of its mouth, the droplets that fell onto the wood at the base of its pointed legs eating through fibre with worrying ease.

The text had also said that a chaurus could launch a dangerous fluid from its mouth- but could only postulate whether it was venomous or corrosive. She supposed the melting wood beneath the creature certainly supported the latter. Serana wasn’t keen on testing if the former part of the theory also happened to be true.

She couldn’t gamble on her abilities to swiftly dodge any such attack in the restraining mire that her feet and robes were anchored in. Neither did she hold out any hope for retreating peacefully anymore.

The surge of thoughts zipped through her dreary mind in a matter of fractions of a second, threatening to send her body back into a gravelike rigor.

One stood out from the murky flood that churned through her mind, dire enough for her to snap to a firm decision.

Cedric’s safety had to take precedence.

She dared to glance behind her only after she sent the chaurus staggering to the ground with a vicious lance of conjured lightning. Time seemed to move at a crawl as her overdriving senses took in the situation faster than she could even move. The chaurus loosed a warbling cry that echoed across the water, the unsettling agony laced into its tones joined by a high-pitched clambering of chitin as its legs scrabbled feebly for purchase on its platform.

Her mind put a bookmark on the warped rent that her attack had burned into the carapace between its eyes, the smoldering surface crawling past her eyes as her head continued its backwards pivot.

To her relief, she saw that Cedric was unharmed, still propped on his elbows after having stumbled in the mire beneath him.

With his safety assured, she turned back to the chaurus, its jagged legs quivering as they dug into the wood, trying to lift the bloated body they were tethered to back into the air. Her keen eyes managed to discern ashen smoke streaming out from one of the joints, the distinct smell of charred flesh lightly touching upon her nostrils.

Black acid streamed flaccidly out from between its mandibles, pooling beneath it like blood. Its glossy blue eyes betrayed none of the torment that the rest of its figure was wracked with, glaring emptily at her and the magickal crystals of ice now swirling into existence in her palm.

She didn’t hesitate in striking it this time. A spear of ice shot out from her outstretched hand, slicing through the falling rain and piercing through the weakened armor on the chaurus’ head with a sharp crack.

Her limbs slackened and fell to her sides, tension rushing out of her body in tandem with the creature’s body limply collapsing on the driftwood. Swampwater mixed with the acid from its mouth in inky swirls that faintly reminded her of eerie paintings in her mother’s study.

The light faded from the chaurus’ eyes, and its pained wails finally gave way to the pitter-patter of rain falling on still carapace.

 

* * *

 

It had been hiding a clutch of eggs under the ship hull. She’d caught sight of them through the holes burned and torn through the ravaged wood planks, glowing with the same pale blue luminescence that had come from their dead guardian’s eyes.

Now they fizzled over a fire, cooking on a grisly plate of chitin she’d wrested off the chaurus.

Her father taught her to make use of as much as she could of a creature after a kill. For her to have just left the eggs there, most likely to die without shelter or an overseer, would have been… wasteful. Disrespectfully so. Something about it still sat bitterly with Serana though, and it didn’t have anything to do with the fact that she’d probably never hear her father say anything about ‘respect’ again.  

Absentmindedly, she prodded at the things with a dry branch, the thin membrane around them faintly browning. The aromas it gave off weren’t entirely unpleasant.

…

She’d done as much as she could for whatever she couldn’t salvage from the chaurus’ corpse. The bestiary she could so clearly remember reading warned against consuming its sickly yellow flesh- and though they said nothing for the white meat of its belly, she hadn’t been willing to test its edibility. The thin, translucent film that still seemed to pulse against its flesh certainly hadn’t helped convince her otherwise.

So she’d burned it. Cremated it atop the wooden planks, the blaze she had lit flaring with an intensity that had even given her some pause, despite the rainfall. She supposed it had brought her back to the paralyzing fear she used to feel when first learning to harness fire, when the lashing tongues of orange would uncontrollably turn on her undead flesh and come close enough to cast stinging embers on her skin.

It was a far cry from the flickering little flame in front of her and Cedric.

Serana glanced up at the man, his head hunched over in a miserable drench of rainwater and mud. They hadn’t said anything to each other on the long trek away from the chaurus’ nest to the tree they squatted under now.

On his part, she could only guess why. But given his utterly forlorn posture, she imagined he must’ve felt shameful over- what? Getting some exotic, if admittedly repulsive, creature killed? Caking himself in cold mud? Scaring the shit out of her?

_He should. For all those things._

She did her best to hide the unexpected frustration that had suddenly flared in her like a burgeoning inferno, tried to present the same gentle, ever-patient porcelain mask on her face to him. But clamming those feelings up inside of her, heaving against the walls of her body like the blue yolks of those eggs bulging against the caramelized membranes that held them in, only served to make hiding them more difficult. She didn’t have to look into a mirror to know that her lips, usually wearing an inviting smile, now bore a stony frown that yearned to twist into a snarl.

_This isn’t going to work,_ the thought rang again in her head.

…

She should’ve said something to him. Anything, just to get her mind off of things. Get _his_ mind off things. It didn’t even have to come down to expressing the disappointment she felt with him- or with _herself_ for thinking it would be so easy to take a feeble mortal under her wing.

Serana sighed, that simple expulsion of air seeming to be the last crack in the dam needed for it to burst.

It wasn’t about Cedric at all. She couldn’t bring herself to truly be angry with someone she’d only known for a few days, after all.

It always came back to her. Her fault for not backing off of that hellnest when she’d already known something wasn’t quite right, her fault for not having the forethought to forage some more food for the rest of the journey, her fault for not keeping a closer eye on Cedric, her fault for needlessly butchering a fascinating creature that had been stranded on the surface, her fault for not stepping in between her parents when everything had gone to shit.

It took a moment to realize that the salty streak of water running down her cheek wasn’t from the rain.

She made no motion to wipe away the tear. Even as another joined it in running down the crusty trail blazed by the first. She wasn’t sure if she could hold it back if she spent another moment acknowledging the fact that she was on the verge of crying.

She inhaled shakily, the scents of burning wood and sizzling yolks amongst the rain and seawater flooding her reinvigorated senses in an intoxicating melange. Maybe there was still some human left in her after all.

…

Maybe it was her fault, maybe it wasn’t. But this was her chance to make it all right- help Cedric out, set the record straight with her father. Find her mother. Gods only knew how it would all end, but she had to fucking _try_ for once.

One of the eggs popped, sizzling blue fluid spilling onto the searing plate and quickly charring into a pale white. Cedric’s ears must’ve perked up at the sound, either that or the smell of fried yolk was enough to stir up his appetite- she found his pale blue eyes, glossy with no small amount of tears themselves, fixating themselves on the fire.

She supposed that was a good a sign as any that they were ready.


	10. Chapter 9

The rain had still not let up by the time her soaked boots hit solid dirt again. Fat water droplets slipped from the pines above onto Serana’s hood with heavy smacks as she turned her gaze skywards, grimly surveying the dark clouds beyond the needle-laden branches. They seemed to grow denser with every moment, the light of the sun drifting further away.

A small comfort to her perhaps, but even that was soiled by the downpour.

Angling her chin down just slightly, she could see the great windmill in Solitude peeking out between the trees.

A driblet of water smacked onto her brow, leaving behind a spine-chilling impact that could not have registered anywhere else on her skin. She could feel it spreading into the hairs there, breaking, flowing like cold blood.

She wiped it aside with her sleeve hastily. The streaks of dampness in the cloth around her arm that brushed against her cheeks were ignored with a stony indifference.

She turned back to Cedric, his gait having changed little as he stopped only briefly to drag the soles of his mud-soaked boots along the slick slope of a nearby rock. Water mixed with the sludge left behind, streaming down the stone in a sickly brown streaks.

His boots looked no better for wear as he made his way closer, head still angled downwards. The distinct sound of squelching in his footsteps had not subsided even on solid ground.

“We’ll have to get you some new boots when we get back home,” she mused out loud. Those eyes of his darted up to her, dim and drab, yet just on the cusp of striking- maybe it was just the contrast of the rain and mud, the messy mop of black hair dangling in front of them that made them look so piercing all of a sudden. Where the cold had thawed away from their surroundings, but the crisp blue sheen in his irises yet lingered.

He wouldn’t look half bad in a Volkihar coat and vest, she found herself pondering. Maybe with a silver gilding in place of the usual gold. A less saturated red tint in the cloth. Something with just a little more… muted sense of regality. Might just be enough to coax him into standing upright more.

“Some new clothes too.” An awkward smile crept over her lips when she found him staring back quietly quite possibly the only thing holding her back from voicing the rest of that train of thought. The image she’d been putting together with an unexpected amount of detail in her head washed away in the rain, leaving behind the scraggly lump of fur and hair that was Cedric in his current, very much less-than regal looking state.

And the blank look in his eyes, cold and distant as the sea, spoke volumes of his lack of care in such matters. He didn’t so much as make the effort to fake a smile back at her for once. Though it felt as though something so silly _shouldn’t_ have bothered her, it did.

_He was a slave._

Yet that never stopped him before.

_He’s tired._

He was tired and hungry the last morning as well.

“Come on, maybe we can stop inside the city to find you something before we head out again,” she finished weakly, turning around on her heel and resuming their march forwards when it was evident that he was still not yet ready to talk.

Truth be told, she wasn’t sure if she was ready either- but the words had come at what seemed a proper enough moment. She’d been wrong, of course. Maybe that was what bothered her more than anything else.

The silence between them weighed heavily on Serana’s shoulders, as though the burden of an Elder Scroll wasn’t already enough for one. Minutes passed into hours as they hiked through thick groves of pine trees, the lush green needles over their heads offering no respite from the downpour.

Several times she looked back to check up on Cedric, make sure he wasn’t teetering on the edge of falling over and slipping down the rain-slick cobblestone slopes they found themselves traversing. Each time she found him plodding onwards with his head hung low.

Soon enough she found her own posture waning, hunching over as the steadying rain pounded on the rim of her hood. The muted smattering of droplets resonated in the indifferent emptiness of her head. One foot in front of the other, that was the only thing she could force herself to focus on.

Distant voices sounded out, muddied in the torrents of water. She barely registered them at first, let alone set aside the effort to try and make out what they were saying. When she realized that they were getting closer with each step though, her senses back snapped back into drenched reality, easing her head up against the rainfall.

She held up a hand behind her, Cedric’s splashing footsteps washing out to a halt. That sound had blended so well into the storm that she’d almost forgotten it was there.

…

The sparsity of life around them seemed to have finally tapered off. A great wall stood ahead of them, wrought together from thick trunks of pine wood that stood as indifferently and sturdy as any stone in the face of the rain. But it was what laid to the sides of the road that gave Serana pause.

Dozens of eyes peered at her from beneath tent canvasses, dark rings underlining their irises. Their bodies sat in postures somehow even more pathetic than hers and Cedric’s, thin tunics dark with water stains and clinging to their hunched shoulders. One man seemed to stand out from the rest, rain and mud muddying his sharp visage and blurring the face paint smeared around his eyes. He couldn’t have been much older than Cedric. And there he sat on a craggy tree stump, cradling a young girl in a threadbare dress, with naught but the shelter of pine needles over their heads.

“This… is this Solitude?” Cedric broke the silence between them with a hoarse whisper.

Her eyes turned skywards, beyond the jagged top of the walls in their way. Spires of stone structures, just as stout and grey as she remembered, laid beyond, perched imposingly on the rocky arch that loomed beyond the mouth of the Karth river. The great windmill towered over them all.

“No. Not yet.”

Her attention fell back down to the road before them as she registered a smattering of voices ringing out over the rain, just past the quiet and forlorn mortals which squatted by the side of the road. A group of bodies, looking no better for wear, stood in front of the wall, intently crowded around a single figure clad in darkened leather armor.

“Doesn’t seem like these are citizens. Unless it’s normal for city guards to keep people out from their own homes nowadays,” she mused aloud.

“No. They’re not. I recognize some of those facial markings.”

“You know them?” She looked back around at him, finding that his gaze had somehow ended up in the ground. Though he buried his chin within the collar of his coat, he could not hide the moistness in his eyes from her.

“No,” he managed to murmur, the small effort it took enough to make his voice crack.

_Shit._ Her expression, which she had not realized until then had set into a stony frown, softened somewhat.

She spared a quick sideways glance to the roadside encampment- she doubted they would be a threat in their current state, but she didn’t like the idea of being fixated on by them. She was satisfied to find that most eyes had turned away from them already.

She took a deep breath, and risked a step closer to Cedric. His head shrunk further into his coat, but his body did not shy away. The difference in height between them, though sparse, was only capitalized by his sinking posture. She became distinctly aware of his quickening breaths as she leaned down ever so slightly to meet his downcast eyes, the tensing of his neck muscles even through the ragged fur collar stretched over it.

“Can you say where they came from?” She prodded cautiously, but with a sincere gentleness cushioning her words.

“I… wouldn’t know exactly. But some of them look like Reachmen to me.”

The people of the Reach was not a culture she’d ever been particularly knowledgeable about- even in her childhood her parents had often dismissed them as barbarians, savages, undeserving of much study. The land itself was something she’d only ever had distant glances at during hunting trips, her view exceedingly sparse with the steep cliffs of rock that enclosed it.

_So what the hell are they doing outside the gates of Solitude?_

Something clicked in the back of her head as she began re-evaluating Cedric’s timid, physical features under a new light- the sharp angles in his face, the litheness of his form – what had stood out to here previously as just odd and vaguely elegant abnormalities starting to register as evidence of interbreeding between man and mer, filtered down through an untold number of generations.

“Sera, I…”

Just like some of the harrowed figures in the camp. Cedric was a Reachman too.

His pale blue eyes were wide with fear. She hadn’t realized that she’d been looking so intently at him, her brows furrowed as she’d lost herself in trying to piece together what was going on.

“I’m one of them. A _fugitive_. I was a slave, but I was freed by nobody’s will. I- I ran, because there were some of us in the mines who tried to fight back- they would’ve killed us all, but I couldn’t fight, I didn’t want to,” he rambled. The jumble of words he spewed came in a shivering torrent that was barely audible over the rain, the only reason why she didn’t make to more hastily quiet him down.

She eased her left hand forwards, in a gentle, placating motion, her tongue sluggish as she tried to process the influx of information. She didn’t expect Cedric to reach out and clasp his own hands around it. There was a gentle nudge in force as he sunk down further, shuddering breaths wracking his body.

“I’ve been running from it, been trying to just forget it…”

She could feel the tremors in his mortal body, the quiver in his knees as they threatened to give out and drag them both down to the ground. A rhythmic thumping reverberated in the miniscule space between her and Cedric, pounding against the slick skin of her palm over the deluge of rain. Steady, basso _._ Laden with blood. _His_ blood, thin and yet brimming with that intoxicating vigor mortals practically exhuded when under duress. It was his heartbeat.

The raw vibrations awoke something in her. A roaring, searing ache in the still void of her own heart.

She wrested her hand free of his, only to reach around behind him with both hands and pull him close into an embrace. His legs gave out, and he fell against her, muddied flesh smothering her dark robes. Her deadened nostrils were flooded with a musky odor of rain mixed with crusty sweat as she leaned into the nook of his neck, her mouth lingering dangerously close to the collar of his coat.

When she opened her mouth to speak again, the softness of her own voice only made the razor sensation of her teeth grazing against the rigid flesh of her tongue all the more apparent.

“It’s okay,” she whispered.

Whether those words were meant for him, or for herself, she wasn’t sure.

* * *

 

The minutes that passed by were a tense, loaded few for Serana, the nerves under her skin reinvigorated and tracking every pulse, every quiet sob that surged through Cedric’s body. She didn’t know what to think of it. _Couldn’t_ afford to dwell on it any longer, lest the flood of all too mortal sensation swallow her whole.

Still as a statue, she stood there, holding him up until the errant twitches in his body stilled. The pumping of his heart remained ever present, and she was only too eager to sever herself from its drumming tempo as soon as she felt he’d regained enough composure to stand on his own again.

A breath that she’d not realized she’d been holding in blew out from her lips, the heat of it searing over the back of her teeth. She wondered how Cedric must’ve felt it, grazing against the cold and rain slick surface of his face.

“I know what it feels like, to run from something you think you can’t face,” she said quietly. Her own words resounded like thunder in the distorting canals of her ears. “I’ve been running myself for a long time.”

He nodded, but never broke his intent gaze from her. She couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something else burning behind the cold blue focus of his irises.

“Believe me when I say you’ll never truly be ready to face it again. Even after you recognize it has to be done, even after you commit to it, even when you’ve turned to stand your ground- there’s always going to be something in the back of your mind that holds you back. It’s pushing on in spite of it all that makes you strong.“

“I’m not strong,” he replied, the firmness in his tone of voice standing in an utterly ignorant defiance of the throaty, mucous-laden words he just spoke.

“You don’t become strong without pushing through bouts of weakness,” she said as she reached out to brush away the viscous drip streaming from his nose. The vile fluid clung to her fingertips. Cedric was no more affected by the gentle motion she’d unexpectedly made than she herself was.

“S _omething_ out there- whether it really is the Daedra or not- saw potential in you. Gods don’t just meddle in the affairs of any mere mortal. Whether you believe it or not, there’s something inside you that _will_ keep you going through all this.”

He blinked, the brief lapse in his gaze seeming to snap him back to reality. He averted his eyes, looking sideways to the gate that stood in their way.

“The way to the castle isn’t much further from us,” she continued, reassured that she was setting his focus straight again. “I can handle the talking, get us through the camp and the gates. Just follow my lead, and everything will be fine. Okay?”

He nodded. She supposed that was as good a response as she was going to get.


	11. Chapter 10

The smell of the mortals was palpable, nipping at her deadened senses even through the film of moist earth. Their blood surged with vigorous scents of fear and trepidation as she stalked amongst them. A balding man averted his steely grey eyes from her as soon as their gazes inadvertently met. A young woman shuffled her mud and ink smeared face further into the shadows as Serana strode by.

She tried to keep her prying eyes away from people as much as she could, but it was difficult for her to simply ignore the feeling of having dozens watching her. Even in her concealing robes, streaked with mud and rain as much as everyone’s clothes around her, they knew something was different about her. She did not doubt that they were unaware of her true nature, just as Cedric was though- if they were not, they would not be so passively avoiding her presence.

A thin hiss slipped out between her gritted teeth as she braced her aching shoulders against the biting strap that tied the cask to her back, only all too aware of the weight bearing down on her.  

Peering up from underneath her hood when she could hear the voices near the gate more clearly, she found, with some brief sense of relief, that they had almost made it through the camp without incident. She could only hope that would hold true for passing the gates.

She slowed her brisk pace down to an idle shuffle as she walked into earshot of the cluster of people around the gate, only now at a distance where she noticed the differences in their attire. Whereas those who remained sitting under their tents and what little shelter they could find in the rain behind them were dressed in dirty grey tunics or the tattered remains of what might’ve been tunics, the ones before her and Cedric now were adorned in finely knit coats, rich tones of greens and browns which were darkened by rain but unsullied by mud.

And judging from the way they spoke to the gate guard, they sported a different attitude to match as well. The words were muddled by the surprising volume of bodies standing before them, but the voices she could discern were pitched high with equal parts desperate urgency and haughty arrogance.

They didn’t so much as budge by the time she and Cedric walked up to the back of the congregation.

A grimace worked over her lips as she shuffled to a stop, seeing no easy way through or around the crowd. She supposed they could always try to scale the wooden wall that had been erected, but she didn’t exactly feel like pissing off whoever built it.

“Hey,” she called out to a man in front of her. When he didn’t so much as acknowledge her, she reached out and gently tapped on his shoulder. The sumptuous fabric of his coat was still warm to the touch, even coated in a thin sheen of rain.

The glare that he fixed her with in response, however, was anything but warm. With no cowl or hood to speak of, the rain had soaked into the young man’s meticulously braided locks of golden blonde hair, quite unpleasantly tangling it all up. She could only imagine that was but one reason for the scowl etched into his otherwise rather fair face.

“What’s going on?” She asked.

“None of your business, _peasant._ Go back to the camp with the rest, and don’t ever presume to touch me again.”

The man turned away before she could even open her mouth to further elaborate. Frustration bubbled in her veins, but she kept herself from more forcefully trying to get his attention again. It seemed quite clear that he- or _any_ of the backs turned to her, for that matter- had no interest in hearing her out. For the moment, she could only entertain herself with the fact that somebody had called her a peasant.

 “These aren’t like the rest,” whispered Serana back to Cedric, dropping back a little to distance them from the crowd. “You know who they are?”

She watched from the corner of her vision as Cedric’s piercing blue eyes scanned upwards, his lips pressing out into a pointed grimace after a few moments. “Not specifically. But I know the look of Markarth nobility.”

“Not a fan of them, I take it?”

There was a hardness in his expression she’d not seen before, an edge to his voice not yet heard. “They’re either slave owners or family of slave owners. I was less than dirt to these kinds of people.”

Considering how the one she’d just spoken to had addressed her, she could certainly believe that.

“I take it the feeling’s mutual then?”

A stern nod in response. It was interesting how quickly anger tempered the demeanor of mortals. She might’ve offered Cedric a smile and pat on the back if not for their current circumstances.

“Doesn’t seem like they’re keen to leave anytime soon. We’re gonna have to make our way through the crowd. Think you can handle that?”

There was a moment’s hesitation in Cedric; understandable, seeing how she’d just been playing off his indignancy, validating it, and now telling him to keep it in check. She saw his hands tighten into fists, the delicate skin stretching over bone.

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

She reached out and took him by the hand, her fingers wrapping around one of his clenched fists. Before he could object, she tugged him along behind her, only all too eagerly pushing past the foul-faced young man who she’d spoken to prior. It was a firm, not excessive force that she brushed by him with, but he stumbled aside as though he’d been struck by a charging cavalry horse. “Sorry. Just passing through,” Serana called out, a hint of smugness managing to worm its way into her words under the falsely sweet apology.

A ripple of reaction travelled through the crowd as she and Cedric started plowing through it, cries of shock and surprise giving way to indignant shouts of only increasing intensity with every nobleman and woman they barged past. The surge of blood in each body she brushed against flowed hotter than the last, but none seemed to eclipse the thumping pulse of Cedric’s heart, travelling through his hands to her.

Bizarrely, she found herself having to suppress the sharp-toothed grin threatening to claw its way past the rigid muscles in her jaw. It almost felt as though the rising thirst in the back of her throat channeled her movements- and she didn’t give a damn at all about pushing a little harder past each person standing in her way.

“Enough! What’s going here?”

The voice cut through the crowd like a honed blade through cloth, momentarily silencing all the errant voices which were bellowing out at her. She didn’t stop, even as the chaotic movements around her slowed- if anything, she only redoubled her efforts, tightening her grip on Cedric and pushing harder to get through the crowd during the lull.

It didn’t last.

“What the fuck are you just standing around for? Do something!”

“Quiet! All of you disperse!”

“To Oblivion with you! We’re not going anywhere until we hear back from the general!”

Just as the clamoring threatened to bubble up again, Serana managed to push herself and Cedric up to the forefront. Nonchalantly, acting as though the gate guard wasn’t glaring steely daggers at her, she brushed a few errant strands of hair out of her eyes from under her hood and thinned the toothy grin plastered on her face into a soft smile.

“Hi.”

“ _’Hi’?_ That’s all you have to say for yourself, you little bitch?” Spat the man standing next to the guard. His stony Nordic features were creased into a sneer, the snarls clashing with what could’ve been a well groomed and comely face. “Barging through like this-” His expression only grew darker when he caught sight of Cedric behind her. “-and with some goatfucking Reachman in tow, no less.”

She felt Cedric’s fist tightening in her grip. She gave him a light squeeze back, hoping it would be enough to settle him down. The smile dropped off her lips, along with any pretense of being civil.

“Leave him out of this. We’re just passing through.”

“Oh just _passing through_ now, are we? And that somehow takes precedence over the concerns of the Jarl of Markarth’s court, does it?”

“If the Jarl of Markarth’s court is concerned with blocking off the whole damn road for the entire day, then yes.”

The man took a step forward, hands which didn’t look like they’d ever lifted anything heavier than a book as of late balling up into fists of his own.

Serana flexed her fingers, a disturbing rush of anticipation surging through her dead veins.

Before the situation could spiral out of hand, however, the gate guard stepped in. The metallic scrape of a blade being unsheathed rang out over the rain, the shrill sound seeming to be enough to freeze the offending nobleman in place. “Thonar. I won’t tolerate you carrying out blatant assault on a citizen. And as far as _I’m_ concerned, she has a point. You’re hindering Imperial operations in processing Solitude citizens and traders.”

The nobleman, apparently named Thonar, scoffed. He didn’t bother to even look at the guard directly. “So that’s how it’s going to be then?”

“I have told you already, General Tullius is well aware of the Forsworn situation in the Reach. I have no word from him or anyone else yet on whether we can commit our forces to taking it back. You’re wasting your efforts barking at me.”

“Yes, of course. What else could be expected from the _Empire?_ You, who abandoned us the last time we called for aid against the Forsworn savages.”

“That was different,” the guard replied, voice just hovering above a snarl of his own. “Need I remind you that the Legion had to fight for its own survival against the Aldmeri Dominion?”

“Yes, do remind me, Hadvar, how did the Legion fare against those wretched elves? They _failed_. The Empire _failed_ the Reach. Can you say the same for the rebellion which you fight against now?”

Silence fell over the road, pregnant with the sound of the ever-ongoing rain splattering against cobblestone.

She glanced between Thonar and the guard, Hadvar if she’d heard correctly- though Thonar still had his back turned, both held their steely gazes and stone set lips as though they were directly staring each other down. Cedric’s heartbeat pulsed against her skin, the sensation drumming on her skull in the stillness. Her palm was slick with a mixture of the rain and his sweat.

She didn’t dare loosen her grip on Cedric until Thonar, with nary another word or gesture, strode past them. Only when she heard the myriad of footsteps behind them start splashing away did she let the breath she’d been holding in seethe through gritted teeth.

That just left Hadvar.

Gently, Serana tugged on Cedric’s hand, noting with some relief that he had allowed it to relax out of its clenched state- a spark of surprise flicked at her senses mid-stride when she noticed his fingers twining around her own.

Briefly startled, she glanced back around at him beyond the edge of her hood, catching the gaze of those blue eyes. There was an intensity to them she could almost feel smoldering there now, bubbling under the surface of the irises. His mouth had parted as though to say something, but was frozen in place, leaving a delicate little opening with puffs of steam trailing quietly out into the cold air.

“Are you ok?” She whispered gently.

Cedric blinked, and the look in his eyes flickered away. His mouth snapped shut, and he merely gave a nod in response.

“We’re almost through this, just hang in there,” She murmured, as much to herself as Cedric while she made her final approach towards Hadvar. The gate guard in question still seemed to have his attention set intently further down the road, lips pressed together in a sharp frown that seemed like it could burst into a snarl at any moment. If the rain soaking through his leather armor and the loose strands of brown hair dangling in front of his eyes bothered him, he did not show it- his expression was set like a statue.

“My apologies, citizens,” he spoke plainly and rigidly. “You should not have been made to suffer the presence of that wretch.”

“Bold way of talking about a nobleman behind his back,” replied Serana, an approving smile nonetheless tugging at her lips.

“That man is noble in name only.” He sighed, shaking his head as though attempting to shed the grimace etched into his face. It didn’t work very well. He looked down at the short sword gripped in his hands, eyes blank of any expression for a solid several seconds of stillness. It took another while for him to sheath the blade again, his arms seeming to move with a deliberate sluggishness, as though he were consciously holding himself back from moving too forcefully.  

He fixed them both with a cold gaze, eyes running up and down both of their forms.  

“So. What business have you here? You don’t look like traders. Or Solitude townsfolk for that matter.”

“We’re just passing through,” repeated Serana.

Hadvar’s frown deepened.

“There’s nothing beyond Solitude except the coast. Where are you travelling to?”

“Why do you need to know?” She rebuked calmly.

_Shit._ Hadvar’s armor left his arms bare, the muscles in plain sight. Though his tone of voice did not change and he did not make any overtly aggressive motions, she could see him tensing up again already. The skin on his arms stretched taut, running slick with rainwater.  

“In case you haven’t noticed, the Empire is at war in Skyrim. Enemy scouts and messengers threaten us on all fronts. Smugglers are more active than ever before. Refugees come trailing in from all parts of the province. It’s our business to know what the intentions of everyone passing this wall are.”

_What Empire?_

She didn’t dare ask that, though the question burned in her mind. Even from just listening to Thonar and Hadvar going at it, she had a wagonful of questions already.

Just exactly how long had she been asleep for?

“So. I’ll ask you again, citizen. What business do you have here?”

She looked him the eye, standing just ever so slightly taller than him. It was a dangerous thing to do, with the conjured illusion of her eyes hiding their true nature being something that a particularly keen eye could see through- but from what she could remember, people were often more inclined to believe she was telling the truth when she did that.

…it had worked with Cedric so far, hadn’t it?

After another moment of deliberation, she spoke.

“My father’s sick,” she said calmly, reigning back the vehemence that she yearned so desperately to inject into those words. She let her mind go blank, trying to lose herself in a web of lies and fantasy to escape from the truth she knew she had to face soon enough. The resonance of those lies with the truth was too difficult to shake though. “He has been for… a while. He owns a small fishing shack in the far north. I was born there, lived with him all my life.”

A lump weighed in her throat, and her lip quivered.  

“The sickness came out of nowhere, hit us like a brick. Shattered our quiet little life. Left him crippled in the head.”

She took a breath to steady herself, the shakes running through her body all too real for her comfort.

“I don’t know if this will cure him,” she said, rolling her shoulders in a fingerless gesture towards the cask slung over her back. “But I have to try.”

“And him?” Hadvar asked bluntly, nodding towards Cedric. “What’s his business with you?”

The image of Cedric’s smoldering blue eyes flared up in her mind, accompanied by the… particularly intense memories she had of his blood. Throbbing, pulsating. Like it was now, their fingers still intertwined.

“He helped me. And I’m returning the favor. He doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”

“I see,” replied Hadvar, but he made no indication that they could pass.  

Droplets of water spattered against her hood in muted impacts, drumming on her ears. Raindrops had been collecting on her face for a while now, her senses having been numb to the sensation. She couldn’t tell if the wetness she felt trailing down her cheek now had come from her eyes or the rain.

“It’s standard procedure for me to search the belongings of whoever passes through here. Would you object to that?”

“…You wouldn’t like what you’d find.”

It was a subtle movement, but Serana noticed Hadvar’s hand inching up towards the blade sheathed at his hip. He stopped halfway through the motion, never breaking eye contact with her.

“You’re not making a very good case for yourself, citizen. Smugglers come through here with sad tales more convincing than yours every day. You can either subject to a search or I’ll have no choice but to assume the worst and forcibly seize your belongings.”

The lump in her throat only grew heavier when those words touched upon her ears, the magicka channeling through her veins almost sickening to her senses.

“I can’t do that,” she said barely above a whisper, her voice finally losing the momentum which had been powering her onwards over the course of days. Unaware of the threat to him, Hadvar clasped the grip of his sword.

“Don’t make me do this,” she pleaded in one last attempt, shards of conjured ice beginning to collect in her one free hand, hidden under the sleeve of her robes.

She had to fight the urge to squeeze her eyes shut.

This fucking Elder Scroll. How many people had to die for it?

“Please, no. Don’t hurt her,” stammered Cedric from behind her. His sudden exclamation, shaky as it was, was enough to stop Hadvar- and in another sense, Serana as well. Surprised, both pairs of eyes turned towards him.

For all the fear and uncertainty in his words, his expression betrayed none of the same. He held Hadvar’s gaze with a firm focus, his hand gripping Serana’s gently.

“I… swear to you, sir, the only lie she’s told is that I helped her. I’ve done nothing for her, and yet she took me in. She’s the kindest soul I’ve met. She doesn’t deserve this.”

“That’s very charitable of her,” replied Hadvar, unmoved by Cedric’s profession- if anything just turning back to her with more suspicion.

“It is, sir. It would be immensely cruel if the world were to repay her kindness by denying her the chance of curing her father.”

Part of her wanted to scream _what the fuck are you doing_ to Cedric- but a greater part of her recognized that her own plan had already come down in a fiery shipwreck anyways. It couldn’t get worse, could it?

“What am I to do then, citizen? Let this woman through on your accounts of her kindness- and run the risk of her feeding the skooma addictions of countless Imperial citizens? I knew a kind woman who lived in Whiterun, once. Last I heard of her, she was arrested for dealing in sleeping tree sap.”

Serana could only shake her head. The magickal ice forming in her free hand dissipated, and she brought it up to swipe away the streams of liquid on her face.

“I knew a man who was addicted to skooma once. I knew lots of men and women like that, working in the mines. Enough to know that cutting off one shipment of skooma won’t cure anyone. But if you cut off a daughter carrying medicine for her father…”

She looked back at Hadvar after quietly clearing out her eyes, noticing with barely suppressed incredulity that his hard expression had softened with Cedric’s last argument. His hand still hovered around his sword, but he seemed far less inclined to use it now.

“I-“

Hadvar held up a hand before she could say anything else.

“Go.”

With that, he pivoted on his heel, striding towards the gate. It creaked open on its hinges as his muscled arms pushed them open, then stood to the side, holding the doors open for her and Cedric. His gaze was firmly set on the road.

Tentatively, still slowly overcoming the mess of emotions churning around inside her, Serana led Cedric through the open gate. She pondered bidding the guard- Hadvar- farewell, but her numbed mind couldn’t conjure anything that seemed appropriate to say. Perhaps that was for the best. Hadvar seemed quite keen on pretending she simply didn’t exist.

_Fuck._

Subconsciously, she found herself squeezing Cedric’s hand in a gesture of thanks as they crossed the threshold. He returned it in kind.


	12. Chapter 11

Rain slicked down the wooden boards of the pier as Cedric trudged along, hand gripped firmly in Sera’s grasp. Their footsteps seemed to move in thumping rhythm with his heartbeat.

Guards shuffled along in the periphery of his vision, these ones visibly bearing the city’s crest on their shields. They wore the same Nordic chainmail that the guards in Markarth did, their faces hidden behind the same crude iron and leather visages.

He had to hold himself back from instinctually tightening his grip around Sera’s hand. Pretend that he didn’t feel the chain hidden in his coat constricting around his chest, grasping at scars left behind by lashings and bruises from beatings. Fight the urge to hunch over and drag Sera down with him, to hide his face from the masked tyrants around him.

He and Sera were the only non-uniformed figures that he could see. There were no sailors crowding around the decks of the great ships moored to the pier, no workers hauling around cargo on the walkways, and none of the bustling voices that accompanied them.

They were alone, the only two people in the midst of a guard regiment. He felt as though, surely, they _should’ve_ stuck out like a sore thumb- that dozens of helmeted gazes should’ve been tracking their every move.

And yet, with every step they took towards the masses of guards he could see, the further away they patrolled. Disappearing around corners of wooden dock houses, down flights of stairs, and reappearing again at the very edge of his view. 

His breathing grew ragged as the sea’s waves roiled up high enough to splash onto the boarded walkways around him. The water was inky black, as it had been by the shores in the dead of night.

The drizzle that had hounded them so constantly over the past few days, drenching his clammy skin to the point that he had become numb to it, surged into a torrential rainfall. A gasp caught in his throat as a sheet of water droplets crashed into his face, the cold rivulets dragging through his hair and sinking into his nostrils. Somehow, he managed to remain upright, propelled onwards as though Sera’s mere presence was enough to keep him steady.

He brought his free arm up to wipe away the sheen of stinging water clinging to his face, the soaked furs of his sleeves dragging wet streaks down his face.

“Sera,” he managed to whisper, without letting the tremble in his body bleed through to his reedy voice. She did not seem to hear him, pulling him along at the same pace as before into the churning shadows ahead.

His bloodshot eyes widened as they registered the walkway ahead splintering apart. Broken boards were flung upwards into the darkness, powdery debris mixing in with the torrents of water that assailed his brow.

He craned his neck up, as though guided by an unseen force. The wall of darkness grew ever closer towards him and Sera, whether because it was moving towards them or because Sera, maddeningly, would not stop in her march forwards, he couldn’t tell.

His thoughts froze when he looked up high enough to catch the crest of the monstrous tidal wave before them. He couldn’t blink, even as streams of water fell against the glassy surface of his eyes from the encroaching wall. He couldn’t pull back, as Sera’s iron grasp pulled him along.

Sera.

_Sera!_

He tried to call out towards her, but the words died in his throat. As though he were drowning already.

The somber roar of the waves finally registered on his deafened ears, twisted by a metallic echo. He could not discern the mumbling words that crashed down around him this time. Perhaps it was because, in that moment of realization, he did not want to.

* * *

 

When he pried his eyes open, globules of what could’ve been ice or water clinging to his eyelashes, he was met with the sight of a still-crackling campfire. Orange flames danced amongst the waves of color in the night sky, their tongues lapping up at the two moons.

The air was still and silent, but the cold that hit him did so with a clarity and sharpness absent from his dreams.

“Oh. You’re up already.”

There was a hesitation to Sera’s voice as it carried out from behind him, a somber undertone to the ever so darkly sweet sound of her words.

He didn’t respond immediately, instead training his eyes on the cold gravel he sat upon. The numbed surface of his palms ran over some pebbles speckling the ground, faintly gleaming with a moist sheen in the firelight.   

“Are you okay?” The sound of her boots crunching against the ground rang out over the shallow roar of the sea in the near distance. In the distance. Not tearing down the Solitude docks in a frenzied, _fearful_ fit of wrath, not bellowing with incomprehensible litanies of hate- 

“It was a just a dream,” he said through a shaky breath, half to himself as he closed his eyes in an attempt to clear his mind. “Just a dream.”

The Solitude docks were well behind them now. Although he supposed it had not been the docks themselves that had left him so unsettled in the dream.

He didn’t budge as Sera laid a gentle hand on his shoulder, the weight barely registering to him over the tremors coursing through his body.

“Do you need to talk about it?”

He thought back again to the dream-image of Sera, the eerie black robes that had concealed her beauty, the muted indifference that she had marched with, the cold and uncaring iron grip she had around him-

“I’d rather not, actually.”

_Just a dream,_ he repeated mentally.

* * *

 

“Come on. We should get moving. We can make it there before sunrise if we leave now.”

Her words shook him from his trance. He blinked once as he slowly pried his eyes away from the firepit, barely a few embers and thin trails of smoke left hovering over the untended ashes now. The hesitation that had gripped him, kept him so fearfully avoiding Sera’s gaze had all been forgotten now, replaced by a weary soreness that burned behind his eyes.

He could only imagine how pitiful he must’ve seemed when he craned his neck around to look at her, his thoughts sluggishly trailing behind his movements. They caught up only when he saw the moonlit paleness of Sera’s skin, green eyes brimming with an ethereal clarity that left him finally loosing a breath through the constricting grasp of the chain in his coat.

“We’re that close?”

“Yeah.” There was a brusqueness to her response that nagged at the back of his mind momentarily, but he reasoned it was likely due to him having wasted valuable time that could’ve been spent travelling already. A spark of guilt lit up inside him, but with a quiet heave, he crushed it under a newfound resolve to make up for that lost time instead. Stiffness wracked every inch of his limbs, and he made a brief show of stretching himself free of that soreness as Sera wordlessly went about covering up the firepit.

There was an audible crack in one of Cedric’s joints as he stretched, loud enough to apparently draw Sera’s attention. He flashed her a sheepish grin.

Again, she did not return the smile.

There was no visible exasperation in her posture as she turned back to coating dirt and gravel over the desiccated ashes of their dead campfire, no dismissive roll of the eyes, no stifled laughter, no… _anything_ , that he would’ve expected-

-from Thera.

Slowly, as though his face were made of sludge, the grin slipped off his chapped lips.

He made a step towards Sera, clearing his throat and meaning to offer help with the cleanup. Before Cedric could even move his legs, she rose from her perch, absentmindedly brushing off her palms on the hem of her robes.

“Ready?”

A trepidation that he couldn’t quite place crept into his heart, at the realization of just how close he was now- to what, he wasn’t even entirely certain.

“I-“

He trailed off, a part of him wanting to say _something_ , but failing to make sense of what was bothering him so.

He thought back to that one night just scant days ago, sitting next to her, listening to her sweet voice drawl on about the days she went hunting, bringing more warmth to his veins than the campfire that had been in front of them. The soft yet firm grasp of her hand around his as she led him through the crowds around Solitude.

“This won’t change anything between us, will it?”

For a moment after he said them, he thought to retract those words, almost certain that the vagueness of his question – which he wished he hadn’t just blurted out all of a sudden- would leave her more puzzled than anything. Her actual response was far more concerning.

“I don’t know,” she said, her eyes disappearing under her hood as she looked down. “I hope it won’t. I really do. But…”

“But what?” His heart pounded, the burning cold of the chain against his chest all but forgotten now as his mind turned over with possibilities. Surely it had to do with his lowborn status, in the presence of her royal family? Or perhaps she’d finally had enough of him entirely, his pitiful stature?

His breathing grew ragged as he quickly found himself spiralling into irrational hypotheticals, insecurity and fear dictating his thoughts in the absence of a response from Sera.

Was he dreaming again?

“Cedric…” He blinked, the mere sound of her voice saying his name enough to grab his attention and tether it to her like sweat-matted hair to skin. “I’m not what you think I am.”

“I don’t understand what you mea-“

His words caught in his throat when she looked up again, her eyes having lost their luminous green hue. There was a faint moistness glistening in the baleful crimson orbs left behind, spreading out towards the beastly yellow sclera around her irises.

He hadn’t just been seeing things, that day when she’d collapsed against the tree, nor when he first met her.

The chain almost seemed to _tug_ at his chest, a cold spike of fear burrowing into his lungs. It urged him to run. To scream, to drown in the alien words of the black ocean from his dreams. But he did neither of those things- he remained frozen in place, as though still entranced as ever with her flawless porcelain skin and the raven locks of hair brushing over them.

“You’re not scared? Of me?”

He blinked, not realizing how long he’d been standing listlessly there, trying- and failing- to process what was happening.

“I’m not sure why I should be,” he answered, the shakiness of his words perhaps betraying the intended meaning behind them. But the more he thought of it- the more he looked at Sera, saw her brows creasing in concern the same way he’d seen before-

-it didn’t change anything about her. Did it? She had done nothing _but_ help him, comfort him. If she had wanted to hurt him, she’d had a thousand opportunities already to do so.

And she was still beautiful, a small part of his mind whispered shamefully.

“Oh. I- you don’t even know what a vampire is, do you?” He couldn’t help but smile a little as she reached behind her head, rubbing the back of her neck awkwardly.

No, he decided. It changed nothing.

“I’d heard a little about them,” he answered truthfully, mind wandering back to that man he’d overheard talking with the innkeeper in Dawnstar. “But never seen one before.”

“Well. Um. Until now, I guess.

…

…I’m a vampire.”

“Sera. I don’t care what you are,” he murmured huskily, a certain damning few words just barely escaping the maddening boldness driving his tongue. Three others took their place instead. “I trust you.”

“I don’t know if I can keep you safe amongst my family, Cedric. They’re… not the same as I am.”

“Your father, you mean?”

Sera nodded.

“I’m guessing a little here, to be honest,” she continued. “But I can say with certainty that if it were my mother sitting on the throne, she wouldn’t have our kin attacking mortals openly.”

So that was what that was all about- the vampire attacks the man in Dawnstar was speaking of, the destruction of the Hall of Vigilants.

“I- I know it sounds bad. But he’s still my father.”

“I understand.”

He wasn’t entirely sure if he _did_ , having never had much of a life with his parents before they were taken from him- but it felt right to say.

“I just… I _know_ we can help you. My family, we received our gifts from a Daedric Prince- and we have entire bookshelves of tomes on them. A lot of them written by my mother herself. We’ve dealt with the very things you’re going through now, and we came out all the stronger for it. I’m just… it’s going to be hard to convince them to help.”

“You got us past that gate guard, didn’t you?”

That elicited a chuckle from her, though it carried little in the way of mirth. “No, Cedric. I’d argue that you did.”

He had to pause, rewind himself back to that moment to confirm what she was telling him- it seemed bizarre to think of it that way, being so used to just following in Sera’s shadow- but he supposed, what she said had a grain of truth to it.

“Well, do you suppose my silver tongue would help with your father?”

“Ha. I wouldn’t count on it.”

They stood in silence for a while, Sera watching the ground intently, her furrowing brows betraying what must’ve been a difficult line of thought to consider.

“Why don’t we get moving for now,” he suggested, clearing his throat, “and we figure it out on the road? There’s still a ways to go until we get there, right?”

“I’ve been telling myself the same thing this whole way,” she responded, a sad smile spreading over her lips. “I wish it were that simple to come up with a good plan.”

…

“Then maybe we shouldn’t. Let’s just go, see how it works out.”

“Cedric. You could die.”

 She was trying, he could tell, to hide the tremors in her voice when she said that, straightening her back, looking him in the eye again.

“They’d never let an ordinary mortal live amongst us, not as anything other than cattle. We’ve only ever had one lucky enough to be a servant to the family, and that was only because she was already one before we went through with the ritual.”

She paused, her lip trembling every so slightly.

“You’d have to become one of us. Not everyone survives that transformation. Even if you did, things wouldn’t be the same for you anymore. You saw what happened to me when we first set out, didn’t you? The sun… weakens us. It _burns_. But not even that can measure to the thirst for blood.”

His heart ached uncontrollably at the sound of her voice, the pained confessions that she spilled forth. She had endured so much. How much, for the sake of him specifically?

He breathed deeply, the icy air devoid of smell as it flooded his lungs. The sea churned quietly beyond, black waves rolling lazily in the dark, a gentle breeze floating above the frigid water.

_Without the dark, there can be no light._

“I’m grateful to you. No matter how this all turns out.”

Her eyes were as striking as ever, he mused. Regal crimson, highlighted by gold, faintly glistening with a tear-glazed sorrow under the moonlight- there was nothing monstrous about them at all.

“…you’ve done a lot for me. More than anyone else has,” he continued, doubtful murmurs in the back of his mind pummeling his thoughts with memories of Thera again. The scraps of bread that she tucked away for him, the small grains of silver that she slipped into his dirt streaked hands when he struck naught but hard rock.  “I trust you with my life. And I’m ready to do whatever needs to be done for your family to take me in.”

A more bitter voice inside him reasoned that they couldn’t be any worse than his old masters. It was overshadowed by a resounding chorus that assured him anything would be worth it to stay with Sera. Mortality be damned.

He reached out when he saw that she still did not move, tentatively laying a hand on her shoulder.

“This isn’t a decision to be made lightly,” she said, voice barely above a whisper now. “I shouldn’t have told you this late. Not when we can hardly turn back already as it is.”

“There’s nothing for me back there anyways. It wouldn’t have changed anything,” he responded softly, confidence, foolhardy as it may have been, building inside him with each passing word.  “Don’t blame yourself.”

“Nothing’s gonna convince you to stay behind, huh?”

“Would you rather I did stay behind?”

There was another pause. The wind chanted wordlessly in Cedric’s ears.

“No.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> walnuts peanuts pineapple smells
> 
> grapes melons oranges and coCONUT GUNS


	13. Chapter 12

It seemed like a dream, floating over the black currents of the sea. Curled up at the back of the creaking rowboat, his limbs pulled in against the shaking core of his body. He was only all too aware of the splashes water that crested up into the boat in the darkness of the night, inky black tendrils reaching in and coating his boots.

He kept his eyes pried wide open, barely able to register the dark silhouette of Sera heave in the shadows as she powered the oars of the boat alone. Were it not for the cask draped over her back, bobbing up and down amongst the blackness, she would’ve been nothing more than another splotch on the churning canvas around him.  

The winds strafed by, bringing naught but stinging cold to his battered body. Flakes of snow from the blinding clouds overhead raked across his skin, bombarding him with a constant torrent of icy sensation that pierced right through his numbed nerves.

The chattering of his teeth registered in his ears, just over the pounding of his heart against the heavy chain bundled together in his coat.

“H-how much longer?” He finally mustered the courage to ask, words rattling out from behind his frost-speckled lips.

“Shouldn’t be far now. Just hang in there.”

Sera did not turn around, but the soothing tones of her voice straining over the tumult of the sea was real enough to anchor his mind onto something.

This wasn’t just another dream. They really were almost there.  

* * *

 

Landfall came without warning. Cedric lurched in his seat as the hull of the rowboat scraped noisily up against the invisible shore. His breathing hitched in his throat for a moment, the bobbing rhythm his body had settled into alongside the shadowy waves of the sea grinding to a staccato halt. Rumbling vibrations rippled through the boat to his shriveled body as it powered forward onto solid ground.

“Stay in here a second, I’m going to drag the boat up the rest of the way,” Sera called out in the howling darkness. The faint sound of oars clattering against the wooden floors registered in his ears shortly thereafter.  

He nodded, wondering if Sera could see the gesture through the billowing drifts of snow. Wondering if she had even looked back at him. Would _he_ have been able to see her face, perfect and stark white, standing out amongst the black, if she had?

_Without the dark, there can be no light._

Cedric shuddered as the snowy wind grazed by, touching on the exposed nape of his neck.

He pulled his limbs in closer as the boat shuddered beneath him, the sloshing of water giving way to wood grinding against gravel. It lasted for only a moment, but the vibrations seemed to have wormed into his very bones by the time it all stopped.

“Well. Here we are. Come on, I’ll help you out.”

Only when he saw her eyes glinting in the dark did the need to suddenly move register in his shaken and frozen limbs. Her hand gently grasped the snow-speckled furs around one of his arms, rigid fibers crackling as she practically peeled it away from his torso. His other arm moved of its own volition, wrapping around the faint outline of her form.

“Easy, easy,” she murmured as his legs creaked up, the bones at his cold-numbed joints scraping against each other. He winced at the sensation, wondering if it was audible to Sera.

His feet touched down on the cold gravel shore, legs still wobbling and swaying as though they were being carried by the sea. Sera didn’t let go, and he found himself gradually leaning on her for stability. He heaved shaky breaths into the wind, the trembles in his body refusing to subside.

“Let’s get you inside before you freeze to death.”

“Yeah,” he replied through chattering teeth.

They traversed the shadowy storm with Sera leading, Cedric still clinging tightly to her. The invisible terrain felt murky beneath him, jagged and rocky. At times, his grip on the quaking earth slipped on unseen patches of ice. Other times, his feet plunged into inky puddles, cold water seeping further into the soaked and then frozen over skin of his boots.

It didn’t seem like it would end, given the agonizing pace they went at.

But at long last, their painful march ground to an earthshaking halt. There were no words exchanged between Sera and the other pair of beady glowing eyes that came into view further out in the dark. Unseen mechanisms screeched and creaked in a splitting cacophony. Millennia-stale wood groaned under the forces of frost-knotted rope, and the muffled shriek of rusted steel grinding together bellowed out from eroded stone.

A dim light pierced the veil of darkness around them, starting as just a small fissure in the black void before rearing into an open maw. A few flickering strands of torchlight illuminated the great doors that now stood open, ice running through the striations in their wooden surfaces like glossy veins.

That scent of moist stone which had been lingering on his nose ever since he’d met Sera now flooded his nostrils, almost blotting out the other smells that drifted out from the open hallway beyond- moldy fabrics of unknown make, burned out wax, and a tinge of something twangy and metallic that put an uneasy churn in his stomach.

Sera said nothing, merely led him onwards, her sight set firmly ahead.

He cast a sideways glance to the other pair of eyes in the dark, the craggy old visage it belonged to now faintly illuminated, but found no reassurance from their blank gaze.

The doors shut behind them, and for the first time in what seemed like an eternity, he no longer heard the whispers of the sea on his ears.


	14. Chapter 13

Their collective pace faltered as the frayed threads of carpet beneath their feet gave way to a dusty stairway. Thin cracks and craters traced jagged patterns along the eroded stone surface, but the structure held firm as they took their first step upwards. The lingering twinge of some metallic scent on his nose which he couldn’t quite place from before washed over Cedric in a sickening haze as soon as the sole of his boot touched down.

The quiet clamor ahead of them settled into an eerie silence, as though abruptly cut off by the gentle scrape of Sera’s boots on the stone.  

Cedric heard a shaky breath from beside him, and turned his limply dangling gaze up towards Sera. He did so just in time to see her reach up with her free hand and slide her hood off.

The few strands of hair which he had only caught tantalizing glimpses of before swayed about gently in the firelight before settling around her pointed porcelain features. Exquisitely patterned braids wrapped around the ebony cascade running down her cheeks in an intricate crown, such beauty somehow still holding sturdy despite being smothered by black cloth.

His heart hammered in his chest as she turned her fully unveiled visage to him, amber and ruby eyes shimmering. Still in a trance, he could barely make out a few tense murmurs echoing in the cavernous silence that laid just beyond. His stomach felt like it was quaking, but it was no longer due to the horribly unsettling scents flooding his nostrils.

Her voice came at him as a whisper, but the dark and rich tones laced into her words rumbled throughout his whole body like thunder. “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” he murmured back blankly, a fleeting thought at the back of his mind wondering if he could’ve possibly refused.

She set her eyes forward once more, and he followed in suit.

His eyes wound up to the gaping doorway at the top of the steps, and the sprawling ceiling that laid beyond. A ring of candles hung suspended from an intricate silver structure, almost like an inverted tree, set in the centre of that ceiling. The light cast twisted shadows across the curving archways, warped silhouettes of _things_ that couldn’t have been human. He saw shadows curl up into enormous, batlike ears, gaping maws stretching open to reveal rows of pointed teeth.

He closed his eyes, and took deep breaths- one, two, three, in rhythm with his and Sera’s plodding steps. _Not monsters,_ he tried to tell himself, the mental sound of his own voice nothing short of jarring to a mind that had heard only the whispers of some damned creature for what seemed an eternity now. Sera was no monster. The people that she lived with couldn’t be monsters.

The reasoning seemed sound in his mind, yet he did not dare open his eyes when their footsteps ground to a halt. That horrible scent he’d not been able to place earlier hit him full force now, sinking into his senses as surely as the smell of smelter smoke and ash. It was blood.

There was something about the voice which addressed them that set him even more on edge, despite the soothing quality to it. The tones of that voice were draped in the same rich darkness that seemed so enticing in Sera- so why then, did he flinch at the sound of it?

“Lady Serana, at long last you return. I trust that you still have the Elder Scroll?”

Perhaps it was the scathing sound of that name on his ears- the warped and basso pronunciation of it clashing with the light and sweet, if truncated, one that she had graced him with. Perhaps it was the mere fact that she had not dared reveal her true name to him that cut deeper. Perhaps it was the heartwrenching disappointment that laced Sera’s - whether or not that was her real name, that was the only name he knew her by - own words when she responded to the voice.

“One would think the return of your daughter would be more important to you than a roll of paper. Father.”

Cedric opened his eyes, and in that moment wished he hadn’t. There was nothing particularly repulsive about Sera’s father, nor the men and women seated around him. If anything, they all cut an incredibly striking image, their slim figures adorned with deep red fabrics and mahogany hued leather. None stood more gracefully than Sera’s father himself, clad in a rich crimson coat that cascaded down from the intricately patterned vest hugging his breast. The same ebony hair which adorned his daughter’s head enveloped his own sculpted features, groomed and straightened with stark precision. His eyes glimmered with the same regal gold and red of his daughter’s.

Had it not been for the bodies that lay on the tables around them, Cedric would’ve been awestruck. As it was, however, he found his eyes uncontrollably drifting towards those carcasses instead, as though following the trickles of vital fluids from the vampires’ pointed chins. Wicked tooth marks stitched down plains of sickeningly supple flesh, thin streams of blood still pumping out of those wounds with an unsettling vigor. It was only when he caught the _gaze_ of one of those bodies, barely even a glimmer of pain in its dull brown eyes, that he realized they were live people.

It was a small consolation that every pair of glowing yellow and red eyes were fixed intently on the balcony he and Sera stood on. He wasn’t sure if he could’ve stomached the sight of them continuing to feed.

Sera’s father spoke again, the dispassionate dryness in his words slicing through the ringing that had settled in Cedric’s ears.

“’Tis no mere ‘roll of paper’. One would think you understand that much.”

Cedric slowly craned his neck around to Sera, as though making any more sudden of a movement would unceremoniously shatter the tense silence hanging over the room. Sera had no such reservations.

Her lips were pressed together tight as she yanked at the straps tying the cask to her back, carelessly letting it slide off her shoulder and onto the floor with a hollow thud. A few anxious murmurs rippled throughout her father’s court while she, in no apparent rush, slid the upright cask along the floor until it was in front of her. The sound of the container’s wooden rim scraping across dusty stone sent shivers down Cedric’s spine.

He saw her eyes, sharpened and alight with a golden fire of the likes he’d never seen before in her, scan over the room. Eventually, they met his gaze- was it only his imagination that she lingered on him for a little longer? That her eyes softened ever so slightly before they passed him by as well?

That she whispered an apology to him from behind clenched teeth?

Her delicate fingers maneuvered around to the wax seals holding down the cask lid- a brief flash of light snapped out from her palms, and the wax melted away into boiling hot vapours. It cast a rippling mirage around her as she popped off the lid.

Her father’s court clamored with whispers and hisses while Cedric still squinted, trying to make out what it was in the steam that roused them so. Words in unfamiliar tongues tangled themselves with hushed murmurs.

The fog dissipated and Sera, with no further delay nor ceremony, reached into the hollow wooden vessel. The thing that she withdrew, a roll of creamy parchment with faintly gleaming strands of light dancing across its surface, sent a ripple of excitement through the crowd.

_“She has the scroll!”_

She did not share in the quiet revelry. If anything, her expression only hardened even more.

 “You carry the hopes of all vampires within your hands right now. You do so, bearing the purest blood of our Lord Bal- that is more important than anything.”

“So important that you had to set your subjects upon the mortal realm, like common brigands? You risk war with all of Tamriel coming out so brazenly.”

If her father was in any way perturbed or angered by the barely restrained fury in her voice, he did not show it. “The mortal striplings of Tamriel are much too consumed in their own wars already,” he replied with a casual dismissiveness. “Do not let the black words of your treasonous mother mislead you; they are of no threat to us, nowadays less than ever.”

“Is that so? Those ‘mortal striplings’ slaughtered the entire search party you sent after me.”

“Lokil was an unsightly beast,” another voice spoke, radiating with an air of haughtiness not dissimilar to the cloaked high elves that he remembered stalking through the Markarth slums. He could almost hear a shadow of their sinister tones in this other voice, stifling the struggles and cries of the helpless. “The impurities of him and his entire band of wretches made them hardly above mortals themselves. It is no surprise that they were brought down so easily.”

A third speaker chimed in, the dashing youthfulness and honeyed tones lacing his words doing nothing to put Cedric at ease. “Indeed, my Lady, it was an unfortunate decision by the court to send Lokil. Perhaps if _I_ had been entrusted with escorting you instead of that stunted creature, your journey here would have been much more… pleasant.”

“How dare you address her grace in such a craven manner-“

The only thing Sera’s father needed to do in order to quell the short outburst from his court was raise his hand. He did not give either of the interrupting speakers so much as a sideways glance before continuing where he left off, with no break in his stony calm demeanor.   

“Vingalmo speaks truth. Lokil was brash, foolish, with a confidence that did not match his paltry abilities. The weight of his own shortcomings was what dragged him down to the grave, not the mortals which stood in his way.”

“He sounds awfully incompetent for someone to entrust the retrieval of your precious scroll to.”

“He was only entrusted with finding and freeing _you_. He had his role to play, you had yours. Is there anything else that needs to be said on the matter?”

Cedric swallowed a lump in his throat, the sound of his saliva scraping down parched flesh rumbling in the ensuing silence. Sera and her father’s eyes stayed locked on each other, but Cedric was soon treated to the distinct feeling of every other gaze in the room drifting towards him.

He made the mistake of meeting one of them. A single eye, glimmering with mischief, peeking around a swath of immaculately combed black hair covering the other eye.  When his mouth opened, rows of subtly pointed teeth grinned at Cedric. The same honeyed voice that spoke up earlier came out, undeterred by the reaction that the last words it carried had roused.  

“Perhaps _her grace_ could explain why she brought a mortal back with her?”

A murmur of agreement rippled throughout the crowd. Cedric cast a panicked glance towards Sera, but the look she gave him in return offered no refuge from the attention of her father.

“He’s-“

“Let him speak for himself. Come forth, mortal. Enough cowering in the shadows. In my court, those who fear the dark are fit only to be consumed by it.”

_Without the dark, there can be no light._

__He jerked upright at the combined onslaught of words ringing in his mind,  the unexpected reprise of sea-whispers piercing through the castle walls and swirling together with the chilling command from Sera’s father- it was all he could do to step forward, minute convulsions running through his legs with each step.

He inhaled deeply, trying to steady his breath, but nearly choked on the blood-tinged air filling his lungs.

“M-my Lord,” he stuttered, unsure of how else to address such a powerful creature. He had to fight to keep his eyes from darting away- as much as his flesh shriveled and quaked beneath his coat, he did not dare let instinct cause him to act disrespectfully.

Seconds of silence ticked by, punctuated by the sound of his heart thrumming in his ears, before Sera’s father broke it.

“What is your name?”

Numb as his tongue was, he responded almost immediately after, without thought. Instinctually. As though he were addressing just another mine overseer.

“Cedric, my Lord.”

“Curious. Past the stench of your flesh you emanate smells of both man and mer- Breton?”

“Reachman,” he answered back, the word weighed down by memories of scorn and hate.

“I see.”

A vacant silence filled the hall, time dribbling into a blur as Cedric stood stock still. His eyes stung as he held the gaze of Sera’s father, unblinking.

“Has my daughter told you of us? Of who we are?”

“Yes. You’re… vampires.”

A smile cracked through the expressionless mask of the vampire lord, though there was no warmth behind it.

“Not _what,_ mortal, _who._ You stand before one of the oldest and most powerful vampire clans in all of Tamriel- do you know our name?”

His blood ran cold with dread, mind churning back over the stew of memories about the past few days. If he failed to answer correctly, would Sera bear the blame for such an insult? The thought of that seemed somehow even more horrifying than himself being punished. He at least had been punished all his life- what was one more punishment?

Maybe it would be best to say nothing. At the very worst, his silence could be taken for insolence.

But as the seconds of silence dragged on, it seemed Sera’s father had no intentions of letting it go that easily- his smile remained, eerily pleasant.

Sera stepped in, voice straining with barely concealed fury.

“Stop toying with him. You’re wasting your own time on these pointless questions.”

“Time is meaningless to me.”

“Well it’s not to me. I didn’t come home to have my friend be interrogated and ridiculed in front of the entire court.”

“He is more than welcome to join the cattle in the pens, if you wish to expedite his introduction.”

Cedric flinched as Sera’s fists slammed down on the railing before them, bringing the surface of the scroll she held just inches away from the calloused stone. He could almost feel the court collectively inhaling a sharp breath.

“He isn’t just any mortal, Father- you know I wouldn’t have taken him with me if he was.”

The mirthless chuckle she received in response suggested her father believed anything but that.

The rest of the court looked on pensively, pointed mouths curled up in thought, brows furrowed. All except one.

A voice that Cedric was beginning to grow uncomfortably familiar with cut in.  

“I’d like to hear her out, my Lord. ‘tis not often I bear witness to such… fiery passion and conviction.”

“I’m not surprised, considering my Father seems to have surrounded himself with spineless sycophants.”

“Oh? I can assure you, m’lady, I’m anything but spineless.”

A bestial growl rumbled beneath those sickeningly honeyed words, a detail that made… something surge through Cedric’s veins, enough to thaw out some feeling in his fingers again. He found them curling up towards his palms.

They went limp again when he noticed Sera’s eyes had sharpened into an amber glare.

“Then maybe you’d better settle down, before I tear out your spine.”

Another voice- Vingalmo’s, if he remembered the name correctly- stepped in placatingly. “Lady Serana, please. This behaviour is most uncharacteristic of you.”

Her father followed with a similar sentiment, silencing the court once more. “Indeed. Your empty bravado does you no credit. If anything, it’s only, as you so eloquently put it, ‘wasting your own time’.”

This time, she didn’t respond. Cedric could see the skin of her knuckles stretching taut with how tightly she gripped the ornate handles of the scroll now.

“Seeing how your mortal ‘friend’ has apparently lost the capacity for speech, it appears that the unenviable task of explaining why he is present in these halls falls to you. Are you quite ready to do so in a civilized manner now?”

“That’s funny, Father. I didn’t think civility mattered to you anymore.”

“If you insist on being so petty, we can always continue this conversation over dinner. You’ve not tasted Reachman blood before, have you?”

“I don’t think whatever Daedric Lord has their sights set on him would be particularly pleased if you did that.”

The stony façade her father wore melted away. His hawklike eyes scanned between her and Cedric, chiseled lips pursing into a frown.

An uneasy wave of murmurs traveled through the court.

Sera continued. “They’ve been speaking to him in his dreams, and from what he’s told me it sounds like they want him to find something out here in the Sea of Ghosts.”

“Some _thing?_ ”   

He realized with a start that she had loosened one of her hands from the scroll, letting it tilt and rest upon the railing- her free hand reached towards him, open palm creased with stress lines. Another few seconds passed before he realized her intention, and he scrabbled through the insides of his coat.

The chain seemed to cling to his furs as he fished them out. He shook as he deposited it in Sera’s palm, the rings of alien metal sticking to his clammy hands.

They rang together with an eerie chime as Sera flung the chain towards her father, who snatched it out the air without so much of an inkling of trepidation in his movements. The stony frown etched into his visage betrayed nothing, but Cedric could see his eyes intently studying every frosted ridge and curve of the thing.

“Do you feel that cold? How it burns against the skin- it’s unnatural.”

“It is a curious trinket, but nothing more. Nothing like the sort of artifact a Daedric Lord would manifest in the mortal plane.”

“I didn’t say it was a Daedric artifact.”

“Then what do you suppose it is? I fail to see how you could associate a simple chain with Daedric intervention.”

“’Tis no mere ‘simple chain’,” she echoed to him mockingly. “It may not be inherently magickal, but that metal’s like nothing I’ve seen. Too lustrous to be iron, too dull to be silver, not a hint of rust on it despite being fished out of the sea.”  

Cedric hadn’t thought about that- she was right. He of all people should’ve seen it before, having handled silver and picked at it with iron for as long as he could remember. It felt far too heavy upon his flesh for such a small thing too- yet when he glimpsed it in his dreams, it had been floating in the water.

The sudden realization only intensified the tingling disquiet under his skin.

“It could be the key to something we’ve never seen before.”       

“The only _thing_ that matters to us is the prophecy, Serana.”

“Don’t be so short-sighted. Who’s to say this mortal’s plight isn’t a part of the prophecy as well? That he wasn’t meant to come here? There’s so much unknown about all of this- you- _we-_ can’t afford to just throw away something as anomalous as this.”

The hall plunged into silence again.

Golden eyes in the court glanced towards each other, giving Cedric a merciful reprieve from their scrutiny.

It did not last.

A new voice addressed him, gravelly like ash.

“Mortal. Lady Serana said that some entity spoke to you in your dreams. Do you have any recollection of what it was like? Their voice? Did they come to you in a discernable form?”

A numbness fell upon Cedric’s tongue, but this time, his mind moved to try and conjure an answer.

He remembered of course, the strange and twisted chants on the winds. Even now, they still echoed in the back of his mind, always seeming to whisper in his ears when he least expected it. But they never spoke to him, never guided him- hell, he hardly understood what they were even saying.

But there was something else.

“There… was a woman’s voice,” he answered finally. “I couldn’t see her. The sound of her voice was muffled, like everything else. It was like I was submerged in water, flailing. There was…”

Gooseflesh crawled up his limbs as he remembered the sensation of moonlit arms pulling him through the ashen, watery void.

“There was something pulling me. Hands, soft and lithe. Leading me into the water.”

“The woman’s voice. What was it like? What did it say to you?”

“I don’t know how to describe it. The voice said… the voice said…”

The voice told him to listen to the chants. The chants drowned out everything else.

He dove back further- into the first dream, before the chants. The anger, the blind hate, the same voices that had spat upon and abused him in the mines. The painful familiarity of it all- before all this.

The woman’s voice had said something about that too.

“It said that it was not my fate to die,” he echoed, but feeling as though something was missing from those words. It gnawed at his thoughts, but the more he tried to recall the details of the dream, the more they swam away into the abyss. Further back into his mind, where the red-eyed beast and its alien chants awaited.

“A bold statement for something to make,” the voice- a Dunmer’s, Cedric realized, catching a glimpse of the speaker’s drab grey features standing out amongst the pale white of his peers- concluded. His bony fingers absentmindedly ran a handkerchief through his red beard while he mused aloud.  “Not many things involve themselves in the fates of mortals.”

“Garan, please. Surely you don’t think-“

“I do not think anything of it, Vingalmo. I am only speculating with the scant few details we have.”

“This sad creature is not worth speculating over.”

"Thank you for your wise input,” Sera cut in, her gritted teeth suggesting she was anything other than thankful. “But I think my father has had enough ‘meaningless’ time to think it over himself.”

“Think what over?” Her father shot back, the smallest hint of exasperation creeping into his words. Maybe time wasn’t as meaningless to him as he’d claimed.

“I would’ve thought it obvious by now. I’d like for him to stay with us for a while- figure out what this all means.”

Cedric gulped. He could feel Sera inhale, see her lithe fingers flexing, her back tensing.

The chain went airborne again, its cleaved ends flittering behind it as it streaked towards Cedric. It cast the silhouette of a streaking comet, fallen from stars unknown, across the arched roof. He winced as it smacked into his open palms, wrapping around to his wrists in a violent embrace.

The heavy, wet sound of the impact reverberated around the hall.

“You want me,” Sera’s father began with a chuckle, “to turn him into one of us?”

“Yes.”

“Did you not just see that? How he cringes and cows away from even the slightest inkling of pain? This creature’s frail body would not survive the transformation. Even if it did, his equally feeble mind would be left broken.”

The look that Sera fixed Cedric with broke something within him. Gone was the fiery anger from her eyes, the stony restraint etched into her frown. Only a faint glimmer of pity remained now.

She’d done all she could for him.

He felt his whole body jellifying, tremors in his bone threatening to erupt into his flesh. With shaky hands, and as steady a breath as he could muster, he pulled the chain that he held back into his coat.

It rested there in a coil, spreading its blood-steeped cold through his chest once more.

“I have endured so much,” he spoke, what little warmth that remained in his veins seeming to trickle out with each word. “Pain, loss, tiredness- I don’t care for it anymore. All that matters to me is what lies at the end of it.”

“Death is all that awaits your kind, mortal.”

“Then what is there for me to lose in undertaking this transformation? If I do not survive, the end is the same for me as if I remained as I am.”

“Do not dare mistake my words to be borne of compassion for _you_. Whether you survive the transformation or not, the mere notion that you could be a vampire would be an insult to Molag Bal.”

He felt a resurgence of warmth in his veins- a rush of _heat_. Triggered by a resonance of the vile words that Sera’s father spewed at him with the same vehement speech that had hounded him all his life in Markarth. He had bowed his head back then and ran away when their hateful words twisted into murderous blades. Ran away from the only person he’d found love with.

“I don’t care for your gods. I don’t care for whatever is hounding me in my dreams. I… I need a future. Something beyond all this muck and cold and ice and damnable filth I drag myself through every day. Sera- your daughter- showed me that there can be something else past all of that.”

“The eternal life of a vampire is not as idyllic as you seem to think it is. If you truly wished to pursue such power, then you would not be so ignorant as to dismiss our gracious Lord.”

His fingers began to curl into fists again, but before he could so much as think of how to respond, how to channel the flames of determination burning in his lungs into words, a familiarly slimy voice slid in from the court.

“Perhaps he can yet be taught- firsthand. If he thinks that he has endured so much pain already, then let him have a taste of what would await him if he would choose to pledge himself to Lord Bal.”

This one brazen speaker- the one with the ridiculously fashioned hair that covered his eye who- leaned back in his chair with a toothy grin.

“What are you suggesting, Sarpa?”   

Sarpa. At least he had a name to go with that foppish face now.

“A small test, my Lord. One which would more than likely grant him his deathwish, but with no slight to Lord Bal.”

“Spit it out then. I tire of wasting our attention on this creature.”

“Do you recall the incident with the death hounds a few months back?”

“Remind me.”

“Fura noticed that some of our hounds had gone missing, a few others acting strangely, lingering by the waste chutes. She made a brief inquiry on the eve of-”

“I remember now. Get to the point of your proposal.”

“Of course, my Lord. Some… confidants of mine looked into the matter a little- on the side, while still searching for the Elder Scroll of course. The importance of our search was, of course, why I did not bring this to your attention earlier.”

“Bring _what_ to my attention earlier?”

Cedric saw a gleaming of red on Sarpa’s fangs as the vampire flashed a sideways grin at him. That detail did not so much as make him blink this time.

“It turns out we have an interloper in the castle undercroft. My confidants discovered journal fragments signed by someone who apparently was exiled from your court some time ago. They’ve been enthralling our own death hounds, right underneath our noses.”

“I see.”

“I understand we still have many immediate preparations to make. Preparations which will keep our warriors busy for some time. I say we send the mortal to deal with this issue- if he succeeds, that’s one less problem for us in the future. If he does not, it’s no skin off our back, and we simply handle it ourselves later.”

A silence that was beginning to seem an all too frequent visitor of the hall settled in once more, but Cedric did not shirk from the myriad of expressions fixed on him now. No eyes burned more brightly than those of Sera’s father, who fixed him with a hawklike glare. From the corner of Cedric’s sight, he saw a glimmer of concern in Sera’s- but she made no effort to dispute Sarpa’s suggestion.

He took that a sign that this was the best chance he had.

“I’ll do it,” he said without a moment of further hesitation. He flexed his bony fingers, unable to shake the memory of driving his pickaxe through a guard’s skull anymore- but rather than feeling the memory return with a churning sickness in his belly, he welcomed it with a chilling indifference. A fleeting thought in the back of his mind noted how… alien it felt.

_We have purpose._

“You may _try_ to do it,” Sera’s father corrected him. “And if you do, you will most likely fail. Reduced to bloody scraps by malnourished death hounds.”

“I know,” Cedric replied with a confidence that did not match the jitters tickling at his nerves. He tried to recall what Sera had said to him in the rain, her cold flesh caressing his- pushing through in spite of his weakness.

“Then you will be escorted outside of these walls. What you do from there is up to you entirely- you could choose to run away, tell your mortal kin of our existence. I care not. But you will not return to this hall unless you are carrying the head of the usurper. Access to the undercroft of the castle lies along the shore, further back. You will find your own way there. You may dally as long as you dare, but do realize that I will see this threat put down one way or another. Should someone else bring the exile’s head to me, then you will never again set foot within my court.”

“I understand.”

 “Very well then,” Sera’s father responded with a curt nod. “Sarpa. See to this mortal’s exit.”

“Of course, my Lord,” Sarpa replied, leaning back and motioning towards a pair of figures behind him. When they stepped into the light, Cedric found that they very much mirrored the wide grin of their apparent master.

He looked back towards Sera, knowing this could well be the last time he ever saw her- she didn’t meet his gaze. Her eyes were set somewhere else, off in the distant back of the room, refusing to meet _anyone’s_ gaze for that matter. The Elder Scroll hung limply in her lithe hands, her shoulders straining to remain upright.

He tried to think of something to say to her- reassurance, an apology- nothing felt right.

So it was that he remained silent, right up until Sarpa’s lackeys marched to the balcony and grasped him roughly. The male one, a wicked-looking black axe hanging loosely from the belt tied around his coat, twisted his clawed fingers into Cedric’s sleeve. The other one, a woman with a wild mane of snow-white hair, dug her fingers into Cedric’s shoulder.

They yanked him with little ceremony, righting his body so that it faced the great doors leading out into the abyssal cold.  

It was a long walk back down that hallway.


End file.
